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 main reason women have a longer life span than men? And how is this difference growing as time passes? The evidence is limited and we’re only able to provide incomplete answers. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; however, we aren’t sure how significant the impact of each of these factors is.

Independently of the exact amount, we can say that at least part of the reason women live so much longer than men do today however not as in the past, is to be due to the fact that a number of important non-biological aspects have changed. What are these new 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, Minecrafting.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Why_Do_Women_Have_Longer_Lives_Than_Men 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. As you can see, every country is above the diagonal line of parity – this means in all countries baby girls can expect to live for longer than a new boy.1

The chart above shows that the advantage of women exists everywhere, the difference between countries is huge. In Russia women are 10 years older than men. In Bhutan the gap is less than half each year.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was smaller in developed countries than it is today.

Let’s examine how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two distinct features stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both genders in the United States live longer than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is an increasing gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used be very small but it increased substantially during the last century.

You can check if the points you’ve listed are applicable to other countries that have data by clicking on the «Change country» option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.