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 why women are more likely to live longer than men? Why the advantage has grown over time? We only have a few clues and the evidence is not sufficient to reach an absolute conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, but we don't know exactly what the contribution of each factor is.

In spite of the precise weight, we know that at least part of the reason women live so much longer than men today, but not previously, has to have to do with the fact that certain significant non-biological elements have changed. These factors are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, اضيق وضعية للجماع like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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. We can see that every country is above the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl from every country could be expected to live for longer than her older brother.

This graph shows that although there is a women's advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be substantial. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan there is a difference of less than half a calendar year.

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The advantage of women in life expectancy was much lower in the richer countries than it is now.
Let's look at the way that female advantages in longevity has changed over time. The next chart plots male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two points stand out.

First, there's an upward trend: Men as well as women in the US are living much, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be very modest, but it grew substantially over the last century.

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