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 live more than men do today, and why have these advantages gotten bigger over time? We only have partial evidence and the evidence isn’t strong enough to make an informed conclusion. While we are aware that there are biological, psychological, and Glorynote writes environmental factors that all play a role in women who live longer than men, we do not know how much each one contributes.

We know that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. But it is not due to the fact that certain non-biological aspects have changed. These are the factors that are changing. 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 all countries are above the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl in all countries can expect to live longer than her brother.

This graph shows that even though women enjoy an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences are often significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than men, while in Bhutan the difference is less than half one year.

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In the richer countries, the women’s advantage in longevity was smaller

Let’s examine how the advantage of women in life expectancy has changed over time. The next chart plots male and female life expectancy at birth in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend: Men and women in the US live a lot, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is getting wider: Although the advantage of women in life expectancy was once very small, it has increased substantially over time.

Using the option ‘Change country by country’ in the chart, you are able to determine if these two points also apply to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.