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. Why do women live longer than men in the present and how have these advantages gotten bigger in the past? There isn't much evidence and we're left with only incomplete solutions. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, but we don't know exactly how significant the impact of each factor is.

We know that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. However it is not because of certain non-biological factors have changed. The factors changing are numerous. 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 you can see, all countries are above the diagonal line of parity - which means that in every country that a baby girl can be expected to live for longer than a new boy.1

The chart above shows that although the female advantage exists in all countries, global differences are significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men, while in Bhutan the gap is just half a year.

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In the richer countries, the women's advantage in longevity was not as great.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below shows gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at the time of birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two areas stand out.

First, there is an upward trend: افضل شامبو وبلسم Men as well as women in the US live a lot, 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 a widening gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be extremely small however, it has increased significantly over the course of the last century.

If you select the option "Change country' on the chart, you can check that these two points also apply to other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.