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

Revision as of 14:20, 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 live longer than men? And why the advantage has grown as time passes? There is only limited evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to draw a definitive conclusion. We know there are biological, psychological, and environmental factors that play an integral role in women living longer than men, we do not know how much each one contributes.

In spite of how much weight, we know that at least a portion of the reason women live longer than men in the present however not as previously, has to be due to the fact that certain fundamental non-biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and تحاميل مهبلية relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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. It is clear that all countries are over the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl from every country could expect to live longer than her younger brother.

This chart shows that, although women have an advantage in all countries, the differences across countries can be substantial. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the gap is less that half a year.

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The advantage women had in terms of life expectancy was lower in the richer countries that it is today.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below shows men and women's life expectancies at the birth in the US during the period 1790 until 2014. Two areas stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Both men and women in the US live a lot, much longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in life expectancy used to be quite small but it increased substantially during the last century.

It is possible to verify that the points you've listed are applicable to other countries with information by clicking on the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.