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

Revision as of 11:35, 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 how have these advantages gotten bigger over time? We only have partial evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to reach an informed conclusion. We know that behavioral, ابر التخسيس biological and 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 of each of these factors is.

In spite of how much number of pounds, we know that a large portion of the reason women live longer than men today however not as in the past, is to relate to 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. It is clear that every country is over the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl in every country can anticipate to live longer than her brother.

This chart illustrates that, even though women enjoy an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the difference is just half a year.

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The advantage of women in life expectancy was less in countries with higher incomes than it is now.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart plots male and female life expectancies at birth in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two things stand out.

First, there's an upward trend. Both men and women in the US have a much longer life span longer today than a century 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 used to be quite small however, ابر التخسيس it has grown significantly over time.

If you select the option "Change country by country' in the chart, you can check that these two points apply to other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.