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

Revision as of 09:30, 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's the main reason women live longer than men? What is the reason the advantage has grown in the past? The evidence isn't conclusive and we only have limited solutions. We know there are behavioral, biological and environmental variables which play a significant role in the longevity of women over males, it isn't clear how much each one contributes.

In spite of the amount of weight, we are aware that at least part of the reason why women live longer than men do today however not as previously, is to do with the fact that some significant non-biological elements have changed. These factors are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, 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, 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 diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl from every country could anticipate to live longer than her brother.

The chart above shows that although the female advantage exists across all countries, the cross-country differences are large. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan, the difference is less that half a year.

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In countries with high incomes, the longevity advantage for women used to be smaller
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart plots the life expectancy of males and females when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two aspects stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. as well as women in the US are living much, much longer than they did a century 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: العاب زوجية female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be very modest, العاب زوجية but it grew substantially over the last century.

Using the option 'Change country from the chart, you are able to confirm that the two points are applicable to the other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.