Why Do Women Have Longer Lives Than Men

Everywhere in the world women live longer than men - but this was not always the case. The available data from rich countries shows that women didn't live longer than men in the 19th century. What makes women live longer than men in the present and how has this advantage increased in the past? We only have partial evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to reach an absolute conclusion. Although we know that there are behavioral, biological and environmental factors that all play a role in women's longevity more than males, it isn't clear how much each factor contributes.

In spite of the number of pounds, we know that at least a portion of the reason why women live longer than men today and not in the past, has to be due to the fact that some fundamental non-biological factors have changed. These are the factors that are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Certain are more complicated. For example, there is evidence that in rich countries the female advantage increased in part because infectious diseases used to affect women disproportionately a century ago, so advances in medicine that reduced the long-term health burden from infectious diseases, especially for survivors, ended up raising women's longevity disproportionately.

Everywhere in the world women tend to live longer than men
The first chart below shows life expectancy at birth for men and women. We can see that all countries are above the diagonal parity line - this means that in all countries baby girls can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart shows that, even though women enjoy an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences are often significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than men, while in Bhutan the difference is less than half each year.

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The female advantage in life expectancy was smaller in countries with higher incomes than it is now.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the male and تحاميل مهبلية female lifespans at birth in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two specific points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both men and women in the US live much, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is an increasing gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very modest however, it has increased significantly over the course of the last century.

You can confirm that these points are also applicable to other countries with data by clicking the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.