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 makes women live longer than men in the present, and why have these advantages gotten bigger in the past? The evidence is sketchy and we only have incomplete solutions. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we do not know how much the influence of each of these factors is.

In spite of how much number of pounds, we know that at a minimum, the reason women live so much longer than men today and not previously, is to be due to the fact that some fundamental non-biological factors have changed. What are these factors that have changed? 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. We can see that all countries are above the diagonal parity line , this means in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that the advantage of women exists across all countries, the country-specific differences are huge. In Russia, women live for 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the difference is less than half a calendar year.

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In countries with high incomes, كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور (Glorynote explains) the female advantage in longevity used to be smaller
We will now examine how the female advantage in terms of longevity has changed over time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancy at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two distinct points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both men as well as women in the US are living much, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is increasing: While the female advantage in terms of life expectancy was tiny however, it has grown significantly with time.

You can verify that these principles are also applicable to other countries with data by selecting the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.