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 live longer than men? What is the reason does this benefit increase as time passes? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to reach an informed conclusion. We know there are behavioral, biological, and environmental factors which all play a part in women’s longevity more than men, we do not know the extent to which each factor plays a role.

It is known that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. But this is not because of certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? 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. As you can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line , it means that in all nations a newborn girl can expect to live for longer than a new boy.1

This chart illustrates that, while there is a female advantage everywhere, cross-country differences could be significant. In Russia women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan there is a difference of just half a year.

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In wealthy countries, the advantage of women in longevity was smaller

We will now examine how the female advantage in life expectancy has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at the time of birth in the US during the period 1790-2014. Two points stand Redax.hu/wiki/index.php?title=Why_Women_Live_Longer_Than_Men; www.surfingjapan.com, out.

First, there’s an upward trend. Men as well as women in the US are living much, 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 getting wider: Although the female advantage in life expectancy was extremely small, it has increased substantially over time.

If you select the option “Change country’ on the chart, you will be able to determine if these two points are applicable to other countries that have available information: Sweden, France and the UK.