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

Revision as of 23:53, 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. Why do women live so longer than men in the present, and why have these advantages gotten bigger in the past? We only have partial evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to draw an informed conclusion. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, صبغ الشعر بالاسود (Suggested Browsing) however, we aren't sure how much the influence of each one of these factors is.

It is known that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. However, this is not due to the fact that certain non-biological aspects have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Other 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, صبغ الشعر بالاسود 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 all countries are above the diagonal parity line , this means in all countries baby girls can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that the advantage of women exists in all countries, difference between countries is huge. In Russia women have a longer life span than men. In Bhutan the gap is just half an hour.

__S.17__
__S.19__
In countries with high incomes, the advantage of women in longevity was not as great.
Let's now look at how the gender advantage in terms of longevity has changed over time. The chart below shows gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at the birth in the US during the period 1790-2014. Two aspects stand out.

First, there's an upward trend. Both 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.

And second, there is a widening gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be quite small however it increased dramatically during the last century.

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