Difference between revisions of "Why Women Are More Likely To Live Longer Than Men"

Revision as of 02:03, 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's the main reason women have a longer life span than men? And how has this advantage gotten larger as time passes? The evidence isn't conclusive and we're left with only partial answers. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; However, we're not sure how significant the impact to each of these variables is.

We are aware that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. But this is not because of certain non-biological aspects have changed. The factors changing are numerous. 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 we can see, all countries are above the diagonal line of parity - which means that in every country a newborn girl can expect to live for longer than a new boy.1

The chart above shows that, while the advantage for women exists across all countries, صبغ الشعر بالاسود the cross-country differences are large. In Russia women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan there is a difference of only half a year.

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In countries with high incomes, the advantage of women in longevity was not as great.
We will now examine how the advantage of women in longevity has changed over time. The next chart shows male and female life expectancies at birth in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two distinct points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both genders in the United States live longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is a widening gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be extremely small, but it grew substantially over the last century.

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