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 how is this difference growing as time passes? We only have partial evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to draw a definitive conclusion. Although we know that there are biological, behavioral and environmental factors which all play a part in women's longevity more than men, we do not know what percentage each factor plays in.

In spite of the number of pounds, we know that at a minimum, the reason women live so much longer than men in the present however not as previously, has to relate to the fact that a number of important 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. 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. We can see that every country is above the diagonal parity line , it means that in all nations the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

Interestingly, اضيق وضعية للجماع this chart shows that, while the advantage for women exists across all countries, the cross-country differences are large. In Russia women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan there is a difference of less that half a year.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was much lower in rich countries than it is today.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart shows male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two things stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend: Men as well as women in the US have a much longer life span longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's a widening gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be extremely small but it increased substantially in the past century.

Using the option 'Change country in the chart, you will be able to check that these two points are applicable to other countries that have available data: Sweden, France and the UK.