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. What is the reason women live longer than men in the present, and why does this benefit increase over time? We only have a few clues and the evidence is not sufficient to reach an absolute conclusion. We know there are biological, psychological and environmental variables that all play a role in women's longevity more than men, we do not know how much each factor contributes.

It is known that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. However this is not due to the fact that certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. What are the factors that are changing? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, 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. As we can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line ; this means that in all countries baby girls can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

The chart above shows that, while the advantage for women exists everywhere, the global differences are significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than men, ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور while in Bhutan the difference is less than half a year.

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The advantage of women in life expectancy was much lower in rich countries than it is today.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart shows male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two aspects stand out.

There is an upward trend. and women in the US have a much longer life span longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is increasing: While the female advantage in life expectancy used to be tiny but it has risen significantly with time.

It is possible to verify that these are applicable to other countries with data by clicking on the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.