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

Revision as of 13:40, 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 more than men do today and how have these advantages gotten bigger in the past? We only have partial evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to reach an unambiguous conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; however, we do not know how much the influence of each one of these factors is.

We have learned that women live longer than men, صبغ الشعر بالاسود (mouse click the following website page) regardless of weight. However this isn't due to the fact that certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. These are the factors that are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some are more complex. 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 - it means that in all nations a newborn girl can expect to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart above shows that although the female advantage exists across all countries, the difference between countries is huge. In Russia women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan the difference is only half a year.

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The advantage of women in life expectancy was smaller in developed countries than it is now.
We will now examine how the gender advantage in longevity has changed with time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancy at the time of birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Women and men in the United States live longer than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is growing: Although the female advantage in terms of life expectancy was very small but it has risen significantly in the past.

It is possible to verify that these principles are also applicable to other countries that have data by selecting the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.