Why Do Women Live Longer 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's the reason women are more likely to live longer than men? And why is this difference growing over time? The evidence isn't conclusive and we're only able to provide limited answers. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we do not know how significant the impact of each of these factors is.

It is known that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. But this is not due to the fact that certain non-biological aspects have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some are more complex. 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. As we can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line , العاب زوجية which means that in every country the newborn girl is likely to live longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart illustrates that, even though women enjoy an advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries are often significant. In Russia women have a longer life span than men. In Bhutan the difference is less than half each year.

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The advantage for women in terms of life expectancy was lower in rich countries than it is today.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart shows male and female life expectancies at birth in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both genders in America live longer than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, there is a widening gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be quite small, but it grew substantially over the last century.

You can verify that these principles are also applicable to other countries with data by selecting the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, العاب زوجية and Sweden.