Difference between revisions of "Why Women Are More Likely To Live Longer Than Men"

Revision as of 16:55, 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. Why do women live longer than men in the present and how does this benefit increase in the past? We only have partial evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to reach an unambiguous conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; but we don't know exactly how much the influence of each factor is.

We are aware that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. But, this is not because of certain 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. There are other issues 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 men and صبغ الشعر بالاسود; what is it worth, women. We can see that every country is above the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl in every country can expect to live longer than her brothers.

This chart illustrates that, although there is a women's advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries are often significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than men, while in Bhutan the gap is just half each year.

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In wealthy countries, the advantage of women in longevity used to be smaller
Let's now look at how the gender advantage in terms of longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows the life expectancy of males and صبغ الشعر بالاسود females when they were born 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 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is increasing: While the female advantage in terms of life expectancy was very small however, it has grown significantly over time.

When you click on the option "Change country from the chart, you will be able to confirm that the two points are also applicable to other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.