Difference between revisions of "Why Women Live Longer Than Men"

Revision as of 16:39, 7 January 2022

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. Why do women live more than men do today and how is this difference growing over time? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not strong enough to make a definitive conclusion. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; however, we aren't sure how much the influence of each of these factors is.

In spite of how much weight, we know that at least part of the reason women live so much longer than men and not in the past, has to be due to the fact that several fundamental non-biological factors have changed. What 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 العاب زوجية 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 - this means that in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live longer than a new boy.1

This chart shows that, although women have an advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries could be significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than males; while in Bhutan the gap is just half each year.

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In rich countries the women's advantage in longevity was previously smaller.
We will now examine how the gender advantage in terms of longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancies at the birth in the US during the period 1790-2014. Two distinct features stand out.

First, there is an upward trend: Men as well as women in the US are living much, العاب زوجية much longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is getting wider: Although the advantage of women in life expectancy was extremely small but it has risen significantly over time.

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