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 main reason women are more likely to live longer than men? And why does this benefit increase in the past? The evidence is sketchy and we only have partial solutions. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; however, we do not know how strong the relative contribution of each factor is.

We know that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. However this is not because of certain non-biological aspects have changed. The factors changing are numerous. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are others that are more intricate. 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. As you can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line - it means that in all nations the newborn girl is likely to live longer than a newborn boy.1

This graph shows that although there is a women's advantage in all countries, the differences across countries are often significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men; in Bhutan the difference is less than half an hour.

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The female advantage in life expectancy was less in developed countries than it is today.
Let's now look at how the gender advantage in life expectancy has changed over time. The following chart shows the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy when they were born in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two distinct points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both genders in America have longer lives than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is a widening gap: كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام The female advantage in life expectancy used to be quite small however, كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام it has increased significantly in the past century.

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