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 have a longer life span than men? And how the advantage has grown in the past? We only have a few clues and the evidence isn't sufficient to draw a definitive conclusion. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we aren't sure how strong the relative contribution of each one of these factors is.

In spite of the amount of weight, we are aware that at a minimum, the reason why women live so much longer than men do today and not in the past, is to have to do with the fact that a number of important 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. There are other issues 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 line of parity. This implies that a baby girl from any country can be expected to live for زيوت تطويل الشعر longer than her brothers.

This chart illustrates that, even though women enjoy an advantage in all countries, the differences across countries can be substantial. In Russia, women live for 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan, the difference is less that half a year.

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In the richer countries, the longevity advantage for women was previously smaller.
Let's now look at how the advantage of women in life expectancy has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at birth in the US between 1790-2014. Two aspects stand out.

There is an upward trend: Men as well as women in the US have a much longer life span longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is a widening gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very small however it increased dramatically during the last century.

It is possible to verify that these are applicable to other countries with data by clicking on the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.