Difference between revisions of "Why Are Women Living Longer Than Men"

Revision as of 22:47, 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. Why do women live more than men do today, and why have these advantages gotten bigger over time? The evidence is sketchy and we have only incomplete solutions. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we aren't sure how strong the relative contribution of each of these factors is.

We know that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. But this is not due to the fact that certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? 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. We can see that every country is over the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl from every country could anticipate to live longer than her brother.

This chart illustrates that, while there is a female advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be substantial. In Russia, women live for 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan there is a difference of only half a year.

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In countries with high incomes, the women's advantage in longevity was previously smaller.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancies at the birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two aspects stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Men and women in America have longer lives than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's an increasing gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be very modest however it increased dramatically over the last century.

It is possible to verify that the points you've listed are applicable to other countries with data by selecting the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and صبغ الشعر بالاسود Sweden.