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 are more likely to live longer than men? And how the advantage has grown over time? The evidence is sketchy and we have only partial solutions. While we are aware that there are biological, behavioral as well as environmental factors which play a significant role in women living longer than men, we don’t know how much each one contributes.

It is known that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. But this is not because of certain biological factors have changed. What are the factors that are changing? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some 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. As you can see, Glorynote.com/%D9%85%D8%A7%D8%B0%D8%A7-%D9%8A%D8%AD%D8%AF%D8%AB-%D8%A8%D9%8A%D9%86-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B2%D9%88%D8%AC%D9%8A%D9%86-%D9%81%D9%8A-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AD%D9%85%D8%A7%D9%85/ every country is above the diagonal parity line , this means that in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live longer than a new boy.1

This graph shows that even though women enjoy an advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries could be significant. In Russia, women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan there is a difference of only half a year.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was smaller in countries with higher incomes than it is now.

Let’s now look at the way that female advantages in life expectancy has changed over time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancy at the time of birth in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two specific points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. and women in the US live a lot, much longer than they did a century 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 to be very modest, but it grew substantially in the past century.

You can verify that these points are also applicable to other countries with data by selecting the «Change country» option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.