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

Revision as of 04:42, 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 women are more likely to live longer than men? Why has this advantage gotten larger over time? We only have partial evidence and the evidence isn't strong enough to make an unambiguous conclusion. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; but we don't know exactly how strong the relative contribution of each of these factors is.

We have learned that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. But, this is not because of 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. Some are more complex. 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, كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام 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 كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام women. It is clear that every country is above the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl in all countries can anticipate to live longer than her brothers.

This chart shows that, although there is a women's advantage in all countries, the differences across countries could be significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than men. In Bhutan the difference is just half an hour.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was much lower in the richer countries as compared to the present.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The following chart shows the men and women's life expectancies when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two distinct points stand out.

First, there's an upward trend: Men as well as women in the US are living 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 an ever-widening gap: female advantage in life expectancy used be very modest however it increased dramatically in the past century.

It is possible to verify that these 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.