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 makes women live longer than men in the present, and why have these advantages gotten bigger over time? The evidence isn’t conclusive and we only have incomplete answers. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; however, we aren’t sure what the contribution of each one of these factors is.

In spite of how much amount, we can say that a large portion of the reason women live so much longer than men however not as in the past, has to have to do with the fact that certain significant non-biological elements have changed. The factors changing are numerous. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are others that are more intricate. 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 زيادة استماعات ساوند كلاود men and women. As we can see, every country is above the diagonal line of parity – which means that in every country the newborn girl is likely to live longer than a new boy.1

Interestingly, this chart shows that, while the advantage for women exists everywhere, the global differences are significant. In Russia, women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan the gap is just half a year.

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In the richer countries, the women’s advantage in longevity used to be smaller

Let’s look at how the gender advantage in terms of longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows male and female life expectancies at birth in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two specific points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Men and women in America live longer than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there’s an ever-widening gap: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very small however, it has increased significantly during the last century.

When you click on the option «Change country by country’ in the chart, you will be able to verify that these two points are also applicable to the other countries having available data: Sweden, France and the UK.