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

Revision as of 08:33, 12 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 have a longer life span than men? What is the reason does this benefit increase in the past? We only have partial evidence and the evidence is not strong enough to make a definitive conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we do not know how much the influence of each factor is.

We know that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. But it is not due to the fact that certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. What are the factors that are changing? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others are more complex. For ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور 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, ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور 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. As we can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line - it means that in all nations baby girls can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that, while the advantage for women exists in all countries, global differences are significant. In Russia, women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the difference is less that half a year.

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In rich countries the women's advantage in longevity used to be smaller
We will now examine how the female advantage in life expectancy has changed over time. The next chart plots male and female life expectancies at birth in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two areas stand out.

There is an upward trend. Men and women in the United States live longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an increasing gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very small but it increased substantially during the last century.

When you click on the option "Change country' on the chart, you can confirm that the two points also apply to other countries that have available data: Sweden, France and the UK.