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

Revision as of 15:27, 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. What's the reason why women live longer than men? What is the reason does this benefit increase in the past? The evidence is sketchy and we're left with only limited solutions. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, but we don't know exactly how strong the relative contribution of each one of these factors is.

Independently of the exact number of pounds, we know that a large portion of the reason women live so much longer than men do today, but not in the past, has to relate to the fact that some 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. 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, افضل شامبو وبلسم 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. We can see that every country is above the diagonal line of parity - this means that in all countries baby girls can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that, while the advantage for women exists everywhere, the country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than males; while in Bhutan the gap is less than half each year.

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The female advantage in terms of life expectancy was lower in the richer countries than it is today.
Let's now look at how the advantage of women in longevity has changed with time. The next chart shows male and female life expectancy at birth in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two areas stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both men as well as women in the US have a much longer life span longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's a widening gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be quite small however, it has increased significantly over the course of the last century.

You can check if these principles are also applicable to other countries with information by clicking on the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and افضل شامبو وبلسم Sweden.