Difference between revisions of "Why Do Women Live Longer Than Men"

Revision as of 17:59, 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 live much longer than men today and how has this advantage increased in the past? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to reach an unambiguous conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; however, we aren't sure how much the influence of each one of these factors is.

We are aware that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. But it is not due to the fact that certain non-biological factors have changed. These variables are evolving. 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 افضل كريم للشعر (click over here) women. As we can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line - it means that in all nations that a baby girl can be expected to live for افضل كريم للشعر longer than a new boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that although the female advantage exists in all countries, global differences are significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan, the difference is less that half a year.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was smaller in the richer countries as compared to the present.
We will now examine how the gender advantage in terms of longevity has changed over time. The next chart plots the life expectancy of males and females at birth in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two specific points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both men as well as women in the US are living much, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's an increasing gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be quite small, but it grew 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 in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.