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

Revision as of 10:44, 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 are more likely to live longer than men? What is the reason does this benefit increase as time passes? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not strong enough to make an unambiguous conclusion. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, However, we're not sure how significant the impact of each one of these factors is.

We are aware that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. But this is not because of certain non-biological factors have changed. These factors 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, افضل كريم للشعر 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 parity line - it means that in all nations a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

It is interesting to note that although the female advantage is present everywhere, difference between countries is huge. In Russia women are 10 years older than men, while in Bhutan the gap is just half a year.

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The female advantage in life expectancy was less in the richer countries than it is today.
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart shows the life expectancy of males and females at birth in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two distinct features stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both genders in America have longer lives than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's a widening gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be very small but it increased substantially in the past century.

By selecting 'Change Country' on the chart, you will be able to determine if these two points apply to other countries that have available information: Sweden, France and the UK.