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

Revision as of 14:35, 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 have a longer life span than men? And how has this advantage gotten larger over time? There isn't much evidence and we only have limited solutions. While we are aware that there are biological, ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور behavioral and environmental factors that all play a role in women who live longer than males, it isn't clear what percentage each factor plays in.

In spite of the amount of weight, we are aware that at least part of the reason why women live so much longer than men do today, ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور but not in the past, is to do with the fact that a number of key non-biological factors have changed. What are the factors that are changing? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, 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. We can see that every country is above the diagonal parity line , it means that in all nations the newborn girl is likely to live longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart illustrates that, although there is a women's advantage across all countries, differences between countries can be significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the gap is less that half a year.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was smaller in the richer countries than it is today.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancies at birth in the US during the period 1790-2014. Two distinct points stand out.

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

The second is that there is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in life expectancy used be quite small but it increased substantially over the course of the last century.

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