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

Revision as of 08:36, 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 so much longer than men today and how have these advantages gotten bigger in the past? There is only limited evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to support a definitive conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; however, we do not know what the contribution of each of these factors is.

In spite of the weight, we know that at a minimum, the reason why women live so much longer than men today but not previously, is to be due to the fact that some fundamental non-biological factors have changed. These are the factors that are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some are more complex. 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. As you can see, all countries are above the diagonal line of parity - this means that in all countries baby girls can expect to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

It is interesting to note that the advantage of women exists in all countries, difference between countries is huge. In Russia women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the difference is less than half a calendar year.

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The female advantage in terms of life expectancy was lower in the richer countries than it is now.
We will now examine how the advantage of women in longevity has changed with time. The next chart compares male and كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور (glorynote.com) female life expectancy when they were born in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two distinct features stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Women and men in the United States live longer than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be extremely small however it increased dramatically in the past century.

If you select the option "Change country in the chart, check that these two points also apply to the other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.