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. Why do women live so more than men do today, and why does this benefit increase in the past? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to support an absolute conclusion. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; however, we do not know how much the influence of each one of these factors is.

We have learned that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. However it is not because of certain biological factors have changed. These variables are evolving. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are other issues that are more intricate. 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, all countries are above the diagonal line of parity - which means that in every country that a baby girl can be expected to live longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart above shows that, while the advantage for women exists in all countries, difference between countries is huge. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men, while in Bhutan the difference is just half each year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
The advantage women had in terms of life expectancy was lower in rich countries than it is now.
Let's look at the way that female advantages in terms of longevity has changed over time. The next chart plots male and female life expectancies at birth in the US between 1790 and ابر التخسيس [what is it worth] 2014. Two areas stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both genders in America have longer lives than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be extremely small, but it grew substantially in the past century.

By selecting 'Change Country' on the chart, you can confirm that the two points apply to the other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.