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 over time? We only have partial evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to draw an unambiguous conclusion. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, However, we're not sure how much the influence of each one of these factors is.

Independently of the exact amount of weight, we are aware that a large portion of the reason why women live so much longer than men today, but not previously, is to relate to the fact that some fundamental non-biological factors have changed. What are these factors that have changed? 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. It is clear that every country is over the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl from every country could be expected to live for صبغ الشعر بالاسود longer than her younger brother.

This graph shows that while there is a female advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than males; while in Bhutan the gap is less than half one year.

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The advantage of women in life expectancy was less in countries with higher incomes than it is today.
We will now examine how the gender advantage in longevity 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 distinct points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Both 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.

There is a widening gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be very modest however, it has increased significantly over the course of the last century.

Using the option 'Change country from the chart, you will be able to determine if these two points also apply to the other countries with available data: صبغ الشعر بالاسود Sweden, France and the UK.