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

Revision as of 09:25, 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. What is the reason women live longer than men? And how has this advantage gotten larger over time? We only have partial evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to reach a definitive conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, However, we're not sure how strong the relative contribution of each one of these factors is.

We are aware that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. But, this is not because of certain non-biological aspects have changed. These are the factors that are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, زيوت تطويل الشعر like the fact that men smoke more often. There are other issues 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, زيوت تطويل الشعر 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 we can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line ; it means that in all nations the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a new boy.1

This graph shows that although women have an advantage in all countries, the differences across countries can be substantial. In Russia women are 10 years older than men, while in Bhutan the difference is just half each year.

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In rich countries the female advantage in longevity was not as great.
We will now examine how the gender advantage in longevity has changed over time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancies at birth in the US between 1790 to 2014. Two distinct points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women in the United States live longer than they used to 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be very modest however it increased dramatically during the last century.

Using the option 'Change country in the chart, you can verify that these two points are applicable to other countries that have available data: Sweden, France and the UK.