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’s the reason women have a longer life span than men? And how does this benefit increase over time? The evidence is sketchy and we only have partial solutions. We know there are biological, psychological and environmental variables that play an integral role in women who live longer than men, we don’t know how much each one contributes.

In spite of the number of pounds, we know that at least a portion of the reason why women live longer than men, but not in the past, is to relate to the fact that some significant non-biological elements have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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 over the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl in every country can expect to live longer than her brother.

Interestingly, this chart shows that although the female advantage exists everywhere, the cross-country differences are large. In Russia women are 10 years older than males; while in Bhutan the gap is just half a year.

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In wealthy countries, the advantage of women in longevity was smaller

Let’s examine the way that female advantages in longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at the 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 are living much, 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: Glorynote.com/%D8%B9%D9%84%D8%A7%D9%85%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AD%D9%85%D9%84-%D8%A8%D9%88%D9%84%D8%AF/ – http://invisiblesheild.com/, The female advantage in life expectancy used to be extremely small but it increased substantially during the last century.

Using the option ‘Change country in the chart, determine if these two points are also applicable to other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.