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 is the reason women live longer than men in the present and why is this difference growing in the past? We only have partial evidence and the evidence isn't strong enough to make a definitive conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; however, we aren't sure what the contribution of each one of these factors is.

In spite of the precise amount, we can say that at least a portion of the reason women live longer than men, but not previously, has to relate to the fact that a number of fundamental non-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. Certain 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. It is clear that all countries are above the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl in all countries can be expected to live for longer than her younger brother.

The chart below shows that while there is a female advantage across all countries, differences between countries can be substantial. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the difference is less than half an hour.

__S.17__
__S.19__
The advantage of women in life expectancy was less in countries with higher incomes than it is now.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart shows male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two specific points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women in America live longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, there is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be very small however, it has increased significantly over the course of the last century.

By selecting 'Change Country from the chart, ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور you can determine if these two points are applicable to the other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.