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 reason why women are more likely to live longer than men? And how the advantage has grown as time passes? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to draw a definitive conclusion. Although we know that there are behavioral, biological and environmental variables which play a significant role in the longevity of women over males, we aren't sure how much each one contributes.

It is known that women live longer than males, http://www.glonetchurch.org/xe/index.php?document_srl=333610&mid=board_tpdb29 regardless of weight. But this isn't due to the fact that certain non-biological aspects have changed. These are the factors that are changing. 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 men and women. We can see that all countries are above the diagonal parity line ; this means that in all countries a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

It is interesting to note that although the female advantage exists in all countries, country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women have a longer life span than males; while in Bhutan the difference is less than half one year.

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In countries with high incomes, the women's advantage in longevity was not as great.
We will now examine how the female advantage in longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two points stand out.

First, there's an upward trend: Men and women in the US are living much, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is increasing: While the advantage of women in life expectancy was quite small but it has risen significantly in the past.

When you click on the option "Change country' on the chart, confirm that the two points apply to the other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.