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

Revision as of 09:13, 11 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 so much longer than men today, and why does this benefit increase in the past? The evidence is sketchy and we're left with only some solutions. Although we know that there are biological, علامات الحمل بولد behavioral and environmental variables which play a significant role in women living longer than males, we aren't sure the extent to which each factor plays a role.

In spite of the precise amount of weight, we are aware that at least a portion of the reason women live longer than men in the present however not as previously, is to be due to the fact that certain fundamental non-biological factors have changed. These are the factors that are changing. 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. We can see that all countries are above the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl in all countries can expect to live longer than her brother.

This graph shows that although women have an advantage in all countries, the differences across countries are often significant. In Russia, women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan there is a difference of less that half a year.

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The female advantage in terms of life expectancy was lower in the richer countries as compared to the present.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two areas stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both men as well as 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, there's an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be extremely small but it increased substantially over the course of the last century.

Using the option 'Change country by country' in the chart, confirm that the two points are also applicable to other countries with available data: Sweden, علامات الحمل بولد France and the UK.