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. Why do women live longer than men in the present and why have these advantages gotten bigger in the past? There is only limited evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to support an unambiguous conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we aren't sure how much the influence to each of these variables is.

It is known that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. But this is not because of certain biological or non-biological factors 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 اضيق وضعية للجماع 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 line of parity - this means that in all countries baby girls can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

This graph shows that although women have an advantage throughout the world, اضيق وضعية للجماع the differences between countries can be significant. In Russia, women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the gap is just half a year.

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In wealthy countries, the advantage of women in longevity was previously smaller.
We will now examine the way that female advantages in terms of longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US in the years 1790-2014. Two areas stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women in the US are living much, much longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is getting wider: Although the advantage of women in life expectancy was extremely small, it has increased substantially over time.

You can check if these are applicable to other countries with data by selecting the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.