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

Revision as of 05:10, 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 more than men do today and how has this advantage increased in the past? There isn't much evidence and we're left with only incomplete solutions. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we do not know how strong the relative contribution of each of these factors is.

It is known that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. But this isn't due to the fact that certain biological or 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. Other are more complicated. For example, افضل شامبو وبلسم 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. As we can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line , which means that in every country a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart shows that, although women have an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be substantial. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the gap is less than half each year.

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In the richer countries, the women's advantage in longevity was previously smaller.
Let's now look at the way that female advantages in longevity has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy when they were born in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two distinct points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both genders in America have longer lives than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is widening: While the advantage of women in life expectancy was once quite small but it has risen significantly with time.

If you select the option "Change country by country' in the chart, you are able to determine if these two points are applicable to the other countries having available data: Sweden, France and the UK.