Difference between revisions of "Why Are Women Living Longer Than Men"

Revision as of 13:07, 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 live longer than men? What is the reason the advantage has grown as time passes? The evidence is limited and we're left with only partial solutions. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; however, we do not know how strong the relative contribution of each one of these factors is.

In spite of how much amount, we can say that a large portion of the reason why women live longer than men today and not previously, is to do with the fact that several important non-biological aspects have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are others 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 above the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl in every country can expect to live longer than her brothers.

This graph shows that while there is a female advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries could be significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan, the difference is less that half a year.

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In wealthy countries, the longevity advantage for women was previously smaller.
Let's look at how the advantage of women in longevity has changed over time. The next chart plots male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two distinct points stand كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور (simply click the up coming website page) out.

First, there is an upward trend. as well as women in the US live much, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is an increasing gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be extremely small however it increased dramatically over the last century.

You can verify that these are applicable to other countries that have information by clicking on the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.