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 as time passes? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to reach an unambiguous conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women are healthier than men; but we don't know exactly how strong the relative contribution to each of these variables is.

We have learned that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. However, this is not due to the fact that certain biological factors have changed. What are the factors that are changing? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some 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 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. It is clear that every country is above the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl from every country could anticipate to live longer than her younger brother.

Interestingly, this chart shows that although the female advantage exists across all countries, the difference between countries is huge. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the difference is just half an hour.

__S.17__
__S.19__
In countries with high incomes, the longevity advantage for women was previously smaller.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the life expectancy of males and females when they were born in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two things stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Men and women in the United States live longer 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 an increasing gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be very small but it increased substantially during the last century.

It is possible to verify that these points are also applicable to other countries with data by clicking the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and علامات الحمل بولد Sweden.