Difference between revisions of "Why Do Women Have Longer Lives Than Men"

Revision as of 15:31, 9 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 women have a longer life span than men? And why does this benefit increase as time passes? There isn't much evidence and we only have limited solutions. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; but we don't know exactly how significant the impact of each one of these factors is.

We know that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. But it is not because of certain biological factors 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, 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 parity line - this means that in all countries a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

This chart illustrates that, العاب زوجية while there is a female advantage everywhere, cross-country differences could be significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than males; while in Bhutan the gap is just half an hour.

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In rich countries the longevity advantage for women was not as great.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy when they were born in the US from 1790 until 2014. Two things stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Both men and women in the US live much, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in life expectancy used to be quite small however it increased dramatically during the last century.

You can verify that the points you've listed are applicable to other countries with information by clicking on the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.