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

Revision as of 00:16, 10 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 makes women live longer than men in the present, and why has this advantage increased over time? The evidence is limited and we only have limited answers. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, but we don't know exactly how strong the relative contribution to each of these variables is.

In spite of how much weight, we know that at a minimum, the reason women live longer than men today, but not in the past, has to have to do with the fact that some significant non-biological elements have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are others that are more intricate. 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. It is clear that all countries are above the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl in all countries can be expected to live for longer than her older brother.

This chart illustrates that, زيوت تطويل الشعر even though women enjoy an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences could be significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males; while in Bhutan the gap is less than half each year.

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In wealthy countries, the longevity advantage for women was previously smaller.
We will now examine how the gender advantage in longevity has changed with time. The chart below shows men and women's life expectancies when they were born in the US in the years 1790 until 2014. Two specific points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both genders in America live longer than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is getting wider: Although the advantage of women in life expectancy was once tiny, it has increased substantially over time.

You can verify that these points are also applicable to other countries with data by selecting the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and زيوت تطويل الشعر Sweden.