Difference between revisions of "Why Women Are More Likely To Live Longer Than Men"

Revision as of 00:37, 13 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? And how is this difference growing in the past? The evidence isn't conclusive and we're left with only partial answers. We recognize that biological, ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we aren't sure what the contribution of each one of these factors is.

It is known that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. However, this is not because of certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Certain 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 , this means that in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart below shows that even though women enjoy an advantage in all countries, the differences across countries can be substantial. In Russia, women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the difference is only half a year.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was much lower in the richer countries as compared to the present.
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the men and women's life expectancies at the time of birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women in the United States live longer than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is a widening gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be extremely small however it increased dramatically in the past century.

Using the option 'Change country' on the chart, you can confirm that the two points are applicable to other countries that have available information: Sweden, France and the UK.