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

Revision as of 01:01, 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 main reason women live longer than men? And why has this advantage gotten larger in the past? The evidence is limited and we're only able to provide some answers. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all 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.

We are aware that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. But this is not because of certain 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. There are others that are more intricate. 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. As you can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line , this means in all countries that a baby girl can be expected to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart illustrates that, while there is a female advantage in all countries, the differences across countries can be significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men, while in Bhutan the difference is less than half an hour.

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In rich countries the women's advantage in longevity was smaller
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart shows male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two things stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Men and women in the United States live 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 ever-widening gap: تحاميل مهبلية female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very modest but it increased substantially over the course of the last century.

If you select the option "Change country from the chart, you will be able to check that these two points apply to the other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.