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 women are more likely to live longer than men? And why is this difference growing in the past? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to reach an informed conclusion. Although we know that there are biological, psychological and environmental factors that play an integral role in women's longevity more than men, we do not know how much each factor contributes.

We know that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. However this is not because of certain biological factors have changed. These factors are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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 العاب زوجية 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 you can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line , this means in all countries a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that, while the advantage for women is present everywhere, difference between countries is huge. In Russia women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan, the difference is less than half a calendar year.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was much lower in developed countries that it is today.
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart plots male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two areas stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Both genders living in America are living longer than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is an increasing gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be very small but it increased substantially over the last century.

By selecting 'Change Country from the chart, you will be able to confirm that the two points also apply to the other countries having available data: Sweden, France and the UK.