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

Revision as of 11:12, 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 reason why women have a longer life span than men? And why the advantage has grown as time passes? We only have partial evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to support an informed conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and صبغ الشعر بالاسود environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we do not know how much the influence to each of these variables is.

In spite of how much number of pounds, we know that at least a portion of the reason women live longer than men and not previously, has to do with the fact that several significant non-biological elements have changed. These variables are evolving. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Other 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. It is clear that all countries are above the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl in all countries can anticipate to live longer than her brothers.

This chart illustrates that, although there is a women's advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be substantial. In Russia women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan there is a difference of just half a year.

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In rich countries the advantage of women in longevity was not as great.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below shows gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at birth in the US in the years 1790-2014. Two points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend: Men and women in the US are living much, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is widening: While the female advantage in life expectancy was extremely small, it has increased substantially in the past.

You can confirm that these principles are also applicable to other countries with data by clicking the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.