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 much longer than men today and why has this advantage increased in the past? There isn't much evidence and we're only able to provide some solutions. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; however, we aren't sure what the contribution of each of these factors is.

It is known that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. However this isn't due to the fact that certain biological factors have changed. These factors 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. We can see that every country is above the diagonal parity line , which means that in every country baby girls can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

This chart shows that, although there is a women's advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be significant. In Russia women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan, the difference is just half a year.

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In wealthy countries, the longevity advantage for women used to be smaller
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart plots male and female life expectancy at birth in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Men and Wiki.bobanetwork.info/wiki/Why_Do_Women_Have_Longer_Lives_Than_Men women in America have longer lives than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, there is an increasing gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very modest, but it grew substantially during the last century.

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