Difference between revisions of "Why Women Are More Likely To Live Longer Than Men"

Revision as of 11:30, 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. 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 have only limited answers. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women have longer life spans than men, but we don't know exactly how significant the impact of each of these factors is.

We have learned that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. However, افضل كريم للشعر this is not due to the fact that certain biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and افضل كريم للشعر relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Certain 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. As we can see, every country is above the diagonal line of parity - which means that in every country the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a new boy.1

The chart below shows that while there is a female advantage in all countries, the differences across countries can be substantial. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the difference is just half an hour.

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In countries with high incomes, the longevity advantage for women was smaller
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the men and women's life expectancies at the time of birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both genders in America live longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is increasing: While the advantage of women in life expectancy was once extremely small but it has risen significantly over time.

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