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

Revision as of 15:41, 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 makes women live more than men do today and why has this advantage increased in the past? There is only limited evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to support an absolute conclusion. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women are healthier than men; however, we aren't sure how significant the impact to each of these variables is.

Independently of the exact amount, we can say that a large portion of the reason women live so much longer than men but not in the past, is to be due to the fact that some fundamental non-biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? 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. We can see that every country is over the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl from every country could be expected to live for longer than her younger brother.

The chart above shows that the advantage of women exists across all countries, the global differences are significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan there is a difference of only half a year.

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In wealthy countries, the advantage of women in longevity was previously smaller.
Let's look at how the advantage of women in life expectancy has changed over time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancies at the time of birth in the US between 1790 until 2014. Two aspects stand out.

There is an upward trend. Men and women in America live longer than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور there's an ever-widening gap: female advantage in life expectancy used be very modest but it increased substantially over the course of the last century.

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