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 more than men do today, 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 a definitive conclusion. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we do not know how much the influence of each one of these factors is.

In spite of how much weight, we know that at a minimum, the reason women live so much longer than men today, but not in the past, has to be due to the fact that some fundamental non-biological factors have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are other issues that are more intricate. For example, Www.aia.community/wiki/en/index.php?title=Why_Women_Are_More_Likely_To_Live_Longer_Than_Men 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. As you can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line ; this means that in all countries baby girls can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that, while the advantage for women is present everywhere, country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men; in Bhutan the gap is less than half each year.

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In countries with high incomes, the women's advantage in longevity used to be smaller
Let's examine how the female advantage in life expectancy has changed over time. The next chart shows the life expectancy of males and females when they were born in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two specific points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Women and men in America have longer lives than they used to a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is widening: While the female advantage in life expectancy was once quite small however, it has grown significantly with time.

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