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 in the present and why has this advantage increased over time? There isn't much evidence and we only have limited solutions. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women have longer life spans than men, but we don't know exactly how significant the impact of each of these factors is.

Independently of the exact amount of weight, we are aware that a large portion of the reason why women live so much longer than men however not as previously, is to be due to the fact that some significant non-biological elements have changed. These are the factors that are changing. 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. It is clear that all countries are above the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl in all countries can expect to live longer than her younger brother.

This graph shows that although there is a women's advantage in all countries, the differences across countries could be significant. In Russia women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan, زيوت تطويل الشعر the difference is less than half a calendar year.

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In countries with high incomes, the longevity advantage for women was smaller
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart plots the male and female lifespans when they were born in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Women and men in the United States live longer than they used to 100 years 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 life expectancy used to be extremely small but it increased substantially over the course of the last century.

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