Difference between revisions of "Why Do Women Have Longer Lives Than Men"

Revision as of 12:37, 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 why women live longer than men? Why does this benefit increase in the past? We only have partial evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to support a definitive conclusion. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women are healthier than men; however, we aren't sure how significant the impact to each of these variables is.

We are aware that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. However it is not due to the fact that certain biological or 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. Other 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 above the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl in every country can be expected to live for longer than her younger brother.

This chart illustrates that, while there is a female advantage everywhere, زيوت تطويل الشعر - simply click the next website, cross-country differences could be significant. In Russia women have a longer life span than males; while in Bhutan the gap is just half one year.

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The advantage of women in life expectancy was less in countries with higher incomes that it is today.
Let's examine how the gender advantage in terms of longevity has changed over time. The next chart plots the male and female lifespans at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

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

Second, there's an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in life expectancy used to be very small however it increased dramatically over the course of the last century.

You can confirm that these are applicable to other countries with data by clicking the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.