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

Revision as of 17:15, 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, and why does this benefit increase over time? There isn't much evidence and we're left with only limited solutions. Although we know that there are behavioral, biological as well as environmental factors that all play a role in women who live longer than males, we aren't sure what percentage each factor plays in.

We are aware that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. However this isn't due to the fact that certain non-biological factors have changed. The factors changing are numerous. 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 علامات الحمل بولد (glorynote.com) women. We can see that every country is over the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl from any country can expect to live longer than her brother.

This chart is interesting in that it shows that, while the advantage for women exists in all countries, country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the gap is just half a year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
The advantage women had in life expectancy was much lower in rich countries than it is today.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart compares the male and female lifespans at birth in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two areas stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Both genders in America have longer lives than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, there is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be quite small, but it grew substantially over the course of the last century.

It is possible to 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.