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

Revision as of 12:36, 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 is the reason women live longer than men in the present and how is this difference growing in the past? There is only limited evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to draw an unambiguous conclusion. We recognize that biological, صبغ الشعر بالاسود behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; However, we're not sure how strong the relative contribution of each of these factors is.

In spite of the precise amount, we can say that at a minimum, the reason why women live so much longer than men in the present, but not previously, is to do with the fact that certain fundamental non-biological factors have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Certain are more complicated. 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 women. We can see that all countries are over the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl from every country could anticipate to live longer than her older brother.

The chart above shows that the advantage of women exists in all countries, cross-country differences are large. In Russia, women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan, the difference is less that half a year.

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The advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was lower in rich countries than it is now.
We will now examine how the female advantage in longevity has changed with time. The chart below shows men and women's life expectancies at birth in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two things stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Men as well as women in the US are living much, much longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be extremely small however it increased dramatically in the past century.

You can check if these principles are also applicable to other countries that have data by selecting the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, صبغ الشعر بالاسود France, and Sweden.