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. What makes women live longer than men in the present and why is this difference growing over time? There is only limited evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to support an absolute conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; but we don't know exactly what the contribution of each factor is.

We have learned that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. But this is not due to the fact that certain non-biological factors have changed. These are the factors that are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Certain are more complicated. 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. We can see that every country is over the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl from every country could be expected to live for longer than her brother.

It is interesting to note that while the female advantage is present everywhere, cross-country differences are large. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the difference is less than half a calendar year.

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In the richer countries, the women's advantage in longevity was not as great.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The following chart shows the male and female lifespans when they were born in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two aspects stand العاب زوجية out.

There is an upward trend: Men as well as women in the US live much, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is growing: العاب زوجية Although the female advantage in life expectancy used to be quite small however, it has grown significantly with time.

When you click on the option "Change country' on the chart, you are able to check that these two points apply to other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.