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 much longer than men today and why has this advantage increased in the past? The evidence is limited and we only have partial answers. While we are aware that there are behavioral, biological and environmental variables that all play a role in the longevity of women over males, we aren't sure how much each factor contributes.

We know that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. However this is not because of certain non-biological factors have changed. These variables are evolving. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Other 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 we can see, every country is above the diagonal line of parity - it means that in all nations the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that while the female advantage is present everywhere, country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women have a longer life span than males; while in Bhutan the difference is just half an hour.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was much lower in developed countries than it is now.
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart plots the male and female lifespans at birth in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two areas stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and العاب زوجية women in America have longer lives than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is a widening gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used be quite small but it increased substantially during the last century.

If you select the option "Change country' on the chart, you are able to confirm that the two points are applicable to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.