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

Revision as of 16:09, 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 women live longer than men? Why is this difference growing in the past? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence isn't strong enough to make an informed conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, However, we're not sure what the contribution of each factor is.

Independently of the exact number of pounds, we know that at least part of the reason why women live longer than men today but not in the past, is to be due to the fact that certain significant non-biological elements have changed. What are these new 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 اوضاع الجماع 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 expect to live longer than her younger brother.

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 longer than men. In Bhutan the gap is less than half a year.

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In wealthy countries, the women's advantage in longevity was not as great.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below illustrates the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at the birth in the US between 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both genders living in America are living longer than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is increasing: While the advantage of women in life expectancy was extremely small It has significantly increased over time.

It is possible to 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.