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 is this difference growing over time? The evidence isn’t conclusive and we’re only able to provide some answers. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; however, we do not know how strong the relative contribution of each of these factors is.

We are aware that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. However this isn’t due to the fact that certain non-biological aspects have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Other 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. As we can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line ; this means that in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

This graph shows that even though women enjoy an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences are often significant. In Russia women live for 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan there is a difference of less that half a year.

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The female advantage in life expectancy was smaller in rich countries than it is now.

Let’s take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancy at the birth in the US in the years 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Men and Mysqldump.azundris.com/exit.php?url=aHR0cHM6Ly9nbG9yeW5vdGUuY29tLyVkOCVhNyVkOSU4NCVkOCViMiVkOSU4OCVkOCVhYy0lZDklODglZDglYTclZDklODQlZDglYjclZDklODElZDklODQv&entry_id=60%3Eadhd women in the United States live longer than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, there is a widening gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be very modest however, it has increased significantly over the course of the last century.

Using the option ‘Change country by country’ in the chart, you can verify that these two points are also applicable to other countries that have available data: Sweden, France and the UK.