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bio_med_guy t1_is6m3bi wrote

Actually there might be a biological factor to it as well. Females have stronger innate and adaptive immune responses than males, which means faster clearance of pathogens and greater vaccine efficacy in females than in males. And there is a different process in the aging between males and females, many age-related diseases show sex-specific patterns, and although women live longer they are frailer and have worse health at the end of life. However to my knowledge, the data is not enough to draw any solid conclusion

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cowox93112 t1_is8ga4c wrote

Society mostly.

There is a series of 'cloister studies', i.e. following the life of nuns and monks. The interesting part here is that, not only do nuns and monks have a generally very healthy lifestyle (some labor, but not too hard, quality food, no dangerous activities etc.), but also males and females pretty much live the same life. The result is that monks have a significantly higher life expectancy than men in general, but it is still 1-2 years shorter than nuns.

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jamesfrancey88 t1_is74tcs wrote

As other commentors have added there is definitely a sex difference in medical mortality. However there is also a huge societal difference if u are male there is a ~70% higher rate of murder as well as the average military is predominantly male. When looking at life span people dieing at the age of ~20 has a significant impact on average mortality. This means that the statistics will be bias towards males having a lesser life span.

This also has an evolution advantage as males are typically bigger and more agressive. This has been hypothesized to be due to the reproduction advantage of keeping woman alive longer than males. Males are much more expendable than woman as one male can reproduce with many females in the time it takes for a female to produce offspring.

This also leaves the question of why do male and female offspring occur at roughly the same rate? This is simply because if the likelihood changes to drastically one way than the sex with less population will be able to pass their genes on more readily making it an advantage to have more of the lesser population. This will eventually even out as it does with most species on earth.

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Lazy-Dragonfruit2756 t1_is8k3a7 wrote

A combination of reasons. If we look at life expectancy vs wealth, the gap between men and women is large for poor and tiny for the most wealthy people. This suggests at least some of the gap is societal, as the gap shrinks as people get further removed from poverty and the various social issues that accompany it.

http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/health/#:~:text=Income%20in%20the%20United%20States,are%20growing%20rapidly%20over%20time.

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Impossible-Wave-3580 t1_is8vkce wrote

In most primates females outlive males. I think there are a few exceptions where it’s close to equal, but I don’t have a source right in front of or anything and I’m pretty sure non of those exceptions are great apes. This has been observed in captivity which controls for a significant amount of riskier behaviour, lack of medical care, and other threats such as predators. But also compared to a lot of mammals, the sexual dimorphism of life expectancy in humans is pretty low. I think a more interesting question is why do human males live so long.

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