Why Women Are More Likely To 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. Why do women live so much longer than men today and why does this benefit increase in the past? The evidence is sketchy and we're left with only some answers. Although we know that there are biological, psychological as well as environmental factors that all play a role in women living longer than men, we don't know how much each factor contributes.

We have learned that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. However this isn't due to the fact that certain non-biological aspects have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Other 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, تحاميل مهبلية 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 diagonal parity line , this means that in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that, while the advantage for women exists everywhere, the global differences are significant. In Russia, women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan there is a difference of only half a year.

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In the richer countries, the female advantage in longevity was smaller
Let's now look at how the gender advantage in longevity has changed with time. The following chart shows the men and women's life expectancies at the birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two aspects stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men as well as women in the US live much, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's an ever-widening gap: female advantage in life expectancy used to be extremely small however it increased dramatically in the past century.

You can check if the points you've listed are applicable to other countries with data by clicking on the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, تحاميل مهبلية France, and Sweden.