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 have a longer life span than men? And how does this benefit increase as time passes? We only have a few clues and the evidence is not sufficient to draw a definitive conclusion. Although we know that there are behavioral, biological, and environmental factors that all play a role in women who live longer than males, we aren't sure how much each factor contributes.

We know that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. But, this is not because of certain biological factors have changed. These are the factors that are changing. 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 Www.freakyexhibits.net/index.php/Why_Are_Women_Living_Longer_Than_Men women. We can see that all countries are above the diagonal parity line ; this means in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live longer than a new boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that, while the advantage for women is present everywhere, cross-country differences are large. In Russia women are 10 years older than men; in Bhutan the difference is just half a year.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was much lower in developed countries than it is now.
Let's now look at the way that female advantages in longevity has changed with time. The next chart compares male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two aspects stand out.

First, there's an upward trend. Men and women in the US live a lot, much 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 a widening gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be quite small, but it grew substantially over the course of the last century.

It is possible to verify that the points you've listed are applicable to other countries that have data by clicking the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.