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

Revision as of 16:38, 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 in the present and how is this difference growing in the past? The evidence is sketchy and we're left with only incomplete solutions. While we are aware that there are biological, behavioral and environmental variables which all play a part in women who live longer than males, we aren't sure the extent to which each factor plays a role.

Independently of the exact weight, we know that a large portion of the reason why women live longer than men do today but not in the past, has to have to do with the fact that several key 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. There are others that are more intricate. For example, علامات الحمل بولد 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, علامات الحمل بولد 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 above the diagonal parity line , it means that in all nations a newborn girl can expect to live for longer than a new boy.1

It is interesting to note that, while the advantage for women exists in all countries, cross-country differences are large. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the difference is less than half one year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
The advantage for women in life expectancy was less in countries with higher incomes that it is today.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart plots the male and female lifespans at birth in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two points stand out.

First, there's an upward trend. and women in the US have a much longer life span 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 confirm that these points are also applicable to other countries that have data by selecting the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.