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. Why do women live so longer than men, and why have these advantages gotten bigger in the past? There is only limited evidence and the evidence isn't strong enough to make a definitive conclusion. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; However, we're not sure how significant the impact of each one of these factors is.

It is known that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. However this is not due to the fact that certain non-biological factors have changed. These factors are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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. As you can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line , it means that in all nations that a baby girl can be expected to live for longer than a new boy.1

This chart illustrates that, even though women enjoy an advantage across all countries, differences between countries are often significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than males; while in Bhutan the difference is less than half each year.

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The female advantage in life expectancy was less in countries with higher incomes than it is today.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart compares the life expectancy of males and females at birth in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two specific points stand out.

First, تخفيض ترتيب اليكسا there is an upward trend. as well as women in the US have a much longer life span longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

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

When you click on the option "Change country' on the chart, you are able to determine if these two points apply to other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.