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

Revision as of 13:57, 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 longer than men in the present and how is this difference growing in the past? There is only limited evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to draw an unambiguous conclusion. Although we know that there are biological, behavioral, and environmental factors which play a significant role in women living longer than men, we do not know what percentage each factor افضل كريم للشعر plays in.

In spite of the precise weight, we know that at a minimum, the reason women live so much longer than men today and not previously, has to be due to the fact that certain important non-biological aspects have changed. These factors are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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 we can see, every country is above the diagonal line of parity - which means that in every country a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart above shows that the advantage of women exists across all countries, the cross-country differences are large. In Russia, women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan the gap is less that half a year.

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In countries with high incomes, the longevity advantage for women was smaller
We will now examine how the advantage of women in longevity has changed with time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancies at birth in the US in the years 1790 until 2014. Two things stand out.

There is an upward trend. Men and women in the US live a lot, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in life expectancy used to be very modest, but it grew substantially over the last century.

By selecting 'Change Country by country' in the chart, you are able to check that these two points also apply to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.