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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 much longer than men today and why is this difference growing over time? We have only a small amount of evidence and Withatomy.ru/why-are-women-living-longer-than-men-6/ the evidence isn't strong enough to make an absolute conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we aren't sure what the contribution of each one of these factors is.

We have learned that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. However this isn't because of certain non-biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Other are more complicated. 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. We can see that all countries are above the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl in every country can be expected to live for longer than her brother.

This graph shows that although women have an advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries are often significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than males; while in Bhutan the gap is just half a year.

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The female advantage in life expectancy was much lower in the richer countries as compared to the present.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The following chart shows the men and women's life expectancies at birth in the US in the years 1790 to 2014. Two specific points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men as well as women in the US live much, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be quite small however it increased dramatically in the past century.

You can check if these principles are also applicable to other countries with data by selecting the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.