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 is the reason women live longer than men in the present and how is this difference growing in the past? We only have a few clues and the evidence isn't strong enough to make an unambiguous conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; However, we're not sure how strong the relative contribution to each of these variables is.

We are aware that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. However, this is not because of certain non-biological aspects have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some 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 العاب زوجية women. We can see that every country is over the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl in every country can be expected to live for longer than her brother.

This graph shows that although women have an advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries are often significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men; in Bhutan the gap is less than half each year.

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In rich countries the advantage of women in longevity was previously smaller.
Let's examine how the gender advantage in longevity has changed with time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancies at the time of birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Women and men in the United States live longer than they used to 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's an increasing gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be very small but it increased substantially in the past century.

If you select the option "Change country from the chart, you can determine if these two points also apply to the other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.