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

Revision as of 02:41, 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 so longer than men in the present and how is this difference growing over time? We only have a few clues and the evidence isn't sufficient to support a definitive conclusion. Although we know that there are behavioral, biological as well as environmental factors that all play a role in the longevity of women over men, we don't know how much each one contributes.

In spite of how much weight, we know that a large portion of the reason women live so much longer than men but not in the past, is to do with the fact that a number of significant non-biological elements have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Other 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. As you can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line - this means that in all countries a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

This graph shows that while there is a female advantage across all countries, differences between countries could be significant. In Russia, women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan there is a difference of less than half a calendar year.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was much lower in countries with higher incomes as compared to the present.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancy at the birth in the US from 1790 until 2014. Two things stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both men as well as women in the US live 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 increasing: While the advantage of women in life expectancy was very small, it has increased substantially over time.

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