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

Revision as of 01:36, 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. Why do women live more than men do today and why does this benefit increase in the past? The evidence is sketchy and we're only able to provide limited solutions. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we do not know what the contribution of each of these factors is.

Independently of the exact number of pounds, we know that at a minimum, the reason why women live longer than men in the present however not as in the past, has to be due to the fact that certain fundamental non-biological factors have changed. What are these changing factors? 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, ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور (simply click the up coming article) 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 all countries are above the diagonal parity line , it means that in all nations a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart shows that, while there is a female advantage in all countries, the differences across countries can be substantial. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the difference is just half one year.

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The advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was lower in developed countries than it is now.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The following chart shows male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two areas stand out.

First, there's an upward trend. Men and 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, the gap is widening: While the female advantage in life expectancy was once very small, it has increased substantially over time.

Using the option 'Change country from the chart, you will be able to verify that these two points also apply to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.