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

Revision as of 06:49, 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 is the reason women live longer than men in the present and how has this advantage increased over time? There is only limited evidence and ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور the evidence isn't strong enough to make an absolute conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور environmental factors contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; however, we do not know how much the influence to each of these variables is.

We have learned that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. However, this is not due to the fact that certain non-biological aspects have changed. These variables are evolving. 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, 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 you can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line , this means that in all countries baby girls can expect to live for longer than a new boy.1

Interestingly, this chart shows that, while the advantage for women exists everywhere, the cross-country differences are large. In Russia women have a longer life span than men. In Bhutan the difference is just half a year.

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The advantage for women in terms of life expectancy was lower in countries with higher incomes than it is today.
Let's now look at how the advantage of women in longevity has changed with time. The next chart plots the life expectancy of males and females when they were born in the US between 1790 and 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.

The gap is growing: Although the female advantage in life expectancy used to be quite small but it has risen significantly over time.

When you click on the option "Change country from the chart, you can confirm that the two points also apply to other countries that have available information: Sweden, France and the UK.