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 reason why women live longer than men? What is the reason is this difference growing in the past? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to reach an unambiguous conclusion. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; but we don't know exactly how much the influence of each one of these factors is.

We have learned that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. But, this is not because of certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. These factors are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are other issues that are more intricate. For Atenday.com.br/author/filomenaarm/ 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, all countries are above the diagonal parity line - this means that in all countries 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 in all countries, the differences across countries can be significant. In Russia, women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan the gap is just half a year.

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In rich countries the female advantage in longevity used to be smaller
Let's look at how the advantage of women in longevity has changed over time. The next chart shows male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two specific points stand out.

There is an upward trend. as well as 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 second is that there is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in life expectancy used be very small however it increased dramatically over the course of the last century.

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