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? What is the reason does this benefit increase as time passes? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to draw a definitive conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer life spans than men, However, we're not sure what the contribution of each of these factors is.

We are aware that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. But it is not due to the fact that 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 صبغ الشعر بالاسود men and women. As we can see, all countries are above the diagonal line of parity - which means that in every country that a baby girl can be expected to live longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart below shows that even though women enjoy an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences are often significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males; while in Bhutan the gap is less than half one year.

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In the richer countries, the female advantage in longevity was not as great.
We will now examine how the advantage of women in terms of longevity has changed over time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancy at the time of birth in the US in the years 1790 until 2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend: Men and women in the US are living much, much longer than they did 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 quite small, but it grew substantially during the last century.

By selecting 'Change Country' on the chart, you are able to confirm that the two points apply to the other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.