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

Revision as of 02:38, 8 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 longer than men and why does this benefit increase over time? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to reach an absolute conclusion. Although we know that there are behavioral, biological and environmental variables that all play a role in women who live longer than men, we do not know the extent to which each factor plays a role.

In spite of the precise amount, we can say that a large portion of the reason why women live longer than men today and not in the past, is to be due to the fact that several key non-biological factors have changed. The factors changing are numerous. 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 زيوت تطويل الشعر 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 every country is above the diagonal parity line - it means that in all nations a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart below shows that although there is a women's advantage in all countries, the differences across countries could be significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan there is a difference of only half a year.

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The advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was lower in countries with higher incomes as compared to the present.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The following chart shows the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at the birth in the US from 1790 until 2014. Two areas stand زيوت تطويل الشعر out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both 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.

And second, there is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be quite small however, it has increased significantly over the course of the last century.

If you select the option "Change country' on the chart, you can check that these two points apply to other countries that have available data: Sweden, France and the UK.