Why Women Are More Likely To 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. What's the main reason women live longer than men? And why does this benefit increase in the past? There isn't much evidence and we have only incomplete solutions. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer life spans than men, However, we're not sure how strong the relative contribution to each of these variables is.

Independently of the exact amount, we can say that a large portion of the reason women live longer than men today and not previously, has to relate to the fact that certain fundamental 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. 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. As you can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line - it means that in all nations that a baby girl can be expected to live longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart below shows that although there is a women's advantage across all countries, differences between countries are often significant. In Russia women have a longer life span than men; in Bhutan the difference is just half an hour.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was much lower in developed countries than it is today.
Let's look at how the advantage of women in longevity has changed with time. The chart below shows gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at the time of birth in the US between 1790-2014. Two areas stand out.

First, there's an upward trend: Men and 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.

The gap is getting wider: Although the female advantage in life expectancy was once quite small It has significantly increased with time.

By selecting 'Change Country from the chart, you will be able to confirm that the two points also apply to other countries with available information: Sweden, France and صبغ الشعر بالاسود the UK.