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

Revision as of 14:08, 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 the advantage has grown as time passes? There isn't much evidence and we only have limited solutions. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, but we don't know exactly how significant the impact of each factor is.

In spite of how much number of pounds, we know that at a minimum, the reason women live so much longer than men do today and العاب زوجية (glorynote.com) not in the past, has to relate to the fact that several fundamental non-biological factors have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, العاب زوجية like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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. As you can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line - this means that in all countries that a baby girl can be expected to live for 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 live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the gap is less than half a calendar year.

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The advantage women had in terms of life expectancy was lower in countries with higher incomes than it is now.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The following chart shows male and female life expectancies at birth in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two things stand out.

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

Second, the gap is growing: Although the advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was quite small but it has risen significantly over time.

You can 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.