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

Revision as of 02:26, 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 reason why women are more likely to live longer than men? Why is this difference growing as time passes? We only have a few clues and the evidence is not sufficient to draw an unambiguous conclusion. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; however, we do not know what the contribution of each one of these factors is.

In spite of how much amount, we can say that at a minimum, the reason why women live longer than men but not previously, has to have to do with the fact that a number of important non-biological aspects have changed. These variables are evolving. 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, اضيق وضعية للجماع 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 line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl from every country could be expected to live for longer than her brother.

Interestingly, this chart shows that although the female advantage is present everywhere, country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan the difference is less that half a year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
The advantage women had in life expectancy was much lower in the richer countries than it is today.
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the men and women's life expectancies at the birth in the US between 1790 to 2014. Two aspects stand out.

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

Second, the gap is increasing: While the female advantage in life expectancy used to be very small however, it has grown significantly with time.

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