That makes me wonder though, is the statistic that women live longer than men a first world, modern thing, or is it a historical trend? I'd think as little as a hundred years ago it might not have been as true, or am I off base?
According to this study referenced by Wikipedia [1] ("Why Men Die Younger: Causes of Mortality Differences by Sex" [2]):
>In her extensive review of the existing literature, Kalben concluded that the fact that women live longer than men was observed at least as far back as 1750 and that, with relatively equal treatment, today males in all parts of the world experience greater mortality than females.
A counterpoint to the point made on higher war related male mortality in the past is that mortality rates for females in child-bearing age groups have traditionally been higher than men of the same age, although this is no longer the case. [1]
WW1 (which was by far the most deadly war prior to WW2) killed around 10 million military personal[1]. Assume they were all male.
World population in 1918 was about 1.8B.
Breaking those 10 million deaths over the 4 years of WW1 gives around 1.4 deaths per 1000 people on earth.
Maternal mortality in England and Wales was around 40 deaths per 1000 births in the same period (England and Wales probably had as good a health system as anywhere on earth at this point, so most places were worse).
I'm not sure how to convert from deaths per birth to deaths per people. Women generally had multiple children.
By comparison, a place like Somalia currently has a death rate of around 10 per 1000 births[4].
On the other hand, women bear children, which historically would have been a huge cause of early death. Not as much these days, though.