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 in the past? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence isn’t strong enough to make an unambiguous conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; but we don’t know exactly how much the influence of each one of these factors is.

We have learned that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. But this isn’t because of certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. These are the factors that are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Certain 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. It is clear that every country is over the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl in every country can be expected to live for longer than her brother.

This graph shows that although there is a women’s advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be substantial. In Russia women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan, the difference is less that half a year.

__S.17__

__S.19__

The female advantage in terms of life expectancy was lower in rich countries as compared to the present.

Let’s examine how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the men and women’s life expectancies at birth in the US between 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Women and men in the United States live longer than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, http://mutvarduvesture.jirmv.lv/index.php/Why_Do_Women_Live_Longer_Than_Men there is a widening gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be very modest however it increased dramatically over the last century.

You can check if these points are also applicable to other countries that have information by clicking on the “Change country” option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.