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 longer than men and how have these advantages gotten bigger in the past? The evidence isn’t conclusive and Wiki.osr-plastic.org/index.php?title=User_talk:BrentHundley we’re only able to provide limited solutions. We know there are biological, behavioral as well as environmental factors that all play a role in women’s longevity more than males, it isn’t clear how much each one contributes.

In spite of the precise amount of weight, we are aware that at a minimum, the reason women live so much longer than men, but not in the past, has to relate to the fact that certain key non-biological factors have changed. These variables are evolving. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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 means that a newborn girl in all countries can be expected to live for longer than her younger brother.

This graph shows that although women have an advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries could be significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the difference is less than half one year.

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The female advantage in terms of life expectancy was lower in the richer countries that it is today.

We will now examine how the advantage of women in terms of longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows the life expectancy of males and females at birth in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two things stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Both genders in America live 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 female advantage in terms of life expectancy was extremely small, it has increased substantially with time.

You can check if these points are also applicable to other countries with data by clicking the «Change country» option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.