Why do women centenarians so outnumber men?

Most centernarians today did hard physical works, either in the farm or in the house. (Much of houseworks had not been mechanized when they were young.)

On the other hand, women are less likely to engage in smoking, binge drinking, binge eating, reckless driving and other stupid things men are known for doing.

Interesting. Do you have more info? My understanding is that this was conventional wisdom in the 1990s, with later studies (an early notable one being a 2004 NIH) calling this into question. That rested primarily on declining efficacy of hormone replacement therapy in reducing cv disease in post-menopausal women. I’m less aware of the role the body’s own estrogen plays.

Still, if women outlive men, is this primarily due to men’s numbers being thinned out prior to their female counterparts reaching menopause (after which women are less protected by estrogen and men are less likely to succumb to motorcycle accidents and gang-related violence)? Or do all-cause mortality rates after age 60 paint a different picture?

Yes, you're right about estrogen and CV disease in women. From the 20th century on, medical doctors and scientists presumed that natural estrogen from the ovaries provided women with what appeared in their eyes to be protection again CVD. Once Big Pharma figured out how to make estrogen products, the industry heavily pushed the idea that estrogen replacement protects women from CVD in order to rake in vast profits selling massive amounts HRT to menopausal and post-menopausal women in the Western world.

But research in the current century has not borne out the previous claims. Women aren't as naturally protected from CV disease as long was assumed. Whilst some protection does appear to exist, it's to a much smaller and more time-limited degree than once thought. Moreover, the protection is not necessarily due to estrogen, or to estrogen alone.

As to the other questions you asked: an analysis of longterm data from the Human Mortality Database published in 2021 provides some answers, at least for the world's more economically-developed countries including the USA and Canada. The HMD collects demographic data from 39 of the world's countries/territories with national records of births and deaths considered reliable going back to the early 1800s. (The records from Sweden go back to 1751.)

The 39 countries in the HMD are mainly Western and Eastern European countries plus Russia, along with various previously European-colonized or heavily Western-influenced countries in other parts of the globe such Asia, Oceania and North America that are generally regarded as more or less "first world" countries.

Canada, Chile and the USA are the only countries in all the Americas included. The only Asian locales included are Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan - and the part of Russia that's in Asia. The only Middle Eastern country included is Israel.

Obviously, if the database was more comprehensive and included mortality rates in Africa, South Asia, Central Asia and East Asia, the Arab and Muslim world, Central and South America, the Caribbean, the Pacific islands, then the trends and sex disparities observed would most likely be very different.

In the 39 countries whose longterm data was analyzed,

Female life expectancy exceeds male life expectancy. Males at ages 15 to 40 die at rates that are often three times female levels, but this excess mortality is not the main cause of the life expectancy gap. Few deaths occur at younger adult ages compared with mortality after age 60 or, historically, among newborns.

Our demographic analysis shows that,up through the early decades of the 20th century, the life expectancy gap largely resulted from excess deaths of infant boys. Afterward, higher mortality among men 60+ became crucial. The higher mortality of males at ages 15 to 40 has played a modest role.

For some countries both today and in the past, e.g., Sweden and Japan (Figs. 1D and 2D), high death rates for men at ages 15 to 40 account for a less than a year of the life expectancy gap. For other countries, e.g., the United States, the contribution has hovered around 1 y. For Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Estonia, excess mortality for young men has played a bigger role, accounting for more than 2 y of the gap in past decades with some decline recently.

Since 1950 high male mortality after age 60 has largely determined the life expectancy gap

The increase and decrease in the gap [of lifespans for the two sexes that occurred in the 20th century] were largely due to the smoking epidemic. The smoking epidemic is the likely cause of the blotch of excess male mortality in Sweden between ages 60 and 80 for cohorts born between 1900 and 1930. A similar blotch can be seen in the United States for cohorts born about a decade earlier and for other countries for cohorts born a decade or two later.

Up until 1930 or so, female mortality often exceeded male levels in childhood and up to about age 40. This is not surprising, as, historically, females have been disadvantaged because of the burden of high levels of maternal depletion, discrimination in intrahousehold resource allocation, both during childhood and at adult ages, and excess mortality from tuberculosis.

These data reveal that before 1950 the excess mortality of baby boys was the biggest contributor to the sex gap in life expectancy, suggesting a strong biological underpinning of mortality at an age when the behavior of boys and girls is similar and when, in some settings, parents might favor boys.

More recently, high mortality among men 60+ has played the key role.

The sex gap in life expectancy appears to be rooted in biological differences between males and females, modulated by social norms, constraints, incentives, roles, and epidemiological contexts that permit behavioral and environmental differences that affect health.