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? Why does this benefit increase in the past? We only have partial evidence and the evidence is not strong enough to make an absolute conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; However, we’re not sure what the contribution to each of these variables is.

We know that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. But this isn’t because of certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Certain 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 every country is above the diagonal line of parity – this means that in all countries that a baby girl can be expected to live for longer than a new boy.1

The chart above shows that although the female advantage exists across all countries, the cross-country differences are large. In Russia women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan there is a difference of only half a year.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was less in countries with higher incomes that it is today.

Let’s examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancies at the time of birth in the US in the years 1790-2014. Two distinct features stand out.

There is an upward trend. Men and women in the US live a lot, Jrf.affnetz.us/newsletter/subscribe?return=https://glorynote.com/%D8%A7%D8%A8%D8%B1-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AA%D8%AE%D8%B3%D9%8A%D8%B3/ 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 growing: Although the female advantage in life expectancy was extremely small, it has increased substantially over time.

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