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

Revision as of 13:37, 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 is the reason women live longer than men? And how has this advantage gotten larger as time passes? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to draw an absolute conclusion. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we aren't sure how strong the relative contribution of each of these factors is.

In spite of the precise number of pounds, we know that a large portion of the reason women live longer than men, but not previously, has to be due to the fact that a number of fundamental non-biological factors have changed. The factors changing are numerous. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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, all countries are above the diagonal parity line - this means that in all countries that a baby girl can be expected to live longer than a new boy.1

Interestingly, this chart shows that while the female advantage exists in all countries, difference between countries is huge. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men; in Bhutan the difference is just half each year.

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In wealthy countries, the advantage of women in longevity was smaller
We will now examine how the female advantage in terms of longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows male and female life expectancy at birth in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two points stand العاب زوجية (you could check here) out.

First, العاب زوجية there is an upward trend. Men and women in the United States live longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, there is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be quite small however it increased dramatically during the last century.

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