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

Revision as of 17:22, 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 have a longer life span than men? And why is this difference growing as time passes? We only have a few clues and the evidence isn't sufficient to draw an informed conclusion. We recognize that biological, العاب زوجية behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; however, we do not know how much the influence of each factor is.

In spite of how much amount of weight, we are aware that at least part of the reason women live longer than men, but not in the past, has to do with the fact that certain 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 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. We can see that every country is above the diagonal parity line ; it means that in all nations a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

The chart above shows that while the female advantage exists everywhere, the country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women have a longer life span than men. In Bhutan the difference is less than half one year.

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

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and العاب زوجية women living in America are living longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, there is an increasing gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be quite small but it increased substantially during the last century.

It is possible to verify that these principles are also applicable to other countries that have data by clicking on the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.