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 so longer than men, and why has this advantage increased over time? The evidence is limited and we only have partial answers. Although we know that there are biological, behavioral, and environmental factors that all play a role in women who live longer than men, we do not know how much each factor contributes.

In spite of how much amount, we can say that a large portion of the reason women live so much longer than men, but not in the past, has to be due to the fact that some fundamental non-biological factors have changed. These variables are evolving. Some are well known and العاب زوجية 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, العاب زوجية 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 all countries are above the diagonal parity line ; this means in all countries a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

Interestingly, this chart shows that the advantage of women is present everywhere, cross-country differences are large. In Russia, women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the difference is just half a year.

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The advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was lower in rich countries that it is today.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the male and female lifespans at birth in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two things stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Both genders living in America are living longer than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is increasing: While the advantage of women in life expectancy used to be very small but it has risen significantly in the past.

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.