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

Revision as of 15:52, 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 how has this advantage gotten larger as time passes? We only have a few clues and the evidence isn't strong enough to make an absolute conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; however, we aren't sure what the contribution of each of these factors is.

In spite of the weight, we know that at least a portion of the reason why women live longer than men do today, but not previously, is to relate to the fact that some fundamental non-biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others are more complicated. 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 parity line - it means that in all nations the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that while the female advantage exists across all countries, ابر التخسيس the country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women live for 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan, the difference is only half a year.

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In rich countries the women's advantage in longevity was previously smaller.
Let's look at how the female advantage in life expectancy has changed over time. The following chart shows the life expectancy of males and females when they were born in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two distinct points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Men as well as 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.

The second is that there is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be very modest however, it has increased significantly over the last century.

If you select the option "Change country from the chart, you will be able to confirm that the two points are also applicable to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.