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

Revision as of 13:49, 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. Why do women live so much longer than men today and how does this benefit increase over time? There is only limited evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to support an informed conclusion. We know that biological, behavioral and صبغ الشعر بالاسود environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; however, we aren't sure how strong the relative contribution of each factor is.

We are aware that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. However, this is not due to the fact that certain biological factors have changed. The factors changing are numerous. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some are more complex. 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. As you can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line , this means in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart above shows that although the female advantage exists in all countries, difference between countries is huge. In Russia women are 10 years older than men. In Bhutan the difference is less than half an hour.

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In countries with high incomes, the longevity advantage for women used to be smaller
We will now examine how the advantage of women in terms of longevity has changed over time. The next chart shows the male and female lifespans at birth in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two specific points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Women and men in America have longer lives than they used to 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very small but it increased substantially during the last century.

You can verify that these points are also applicable to other countries that have data by selecting the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.