Difference between revisions of "Why Do Women Have Longer Lives Than Men"

Revision as of 02:51, 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 makes women live longer than men, and why has this advantage increased over time? There isn't much evidence and we only have limited answers. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, However, we're not sure how strong the relative 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 due to the fact that certain biological or 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 other issues 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, ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور (redirect to Glorynote) 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, every country is above the diagonal parity line - it means that in all nations the newborn girl is likely to live longer than a new boy.1

Interestingly, this chart shows that although the female advantage is present everywhere, cross-country differences are large. In Russia women live for 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the difference is less than half a calendar year.

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In the richer countries, the longevity advantage for women was not as great.
Let's examine how the advantage of women in longevity has changed with time. The chart below illustrates the men and women's life expectancies when they were born in the US between 1790-2014. Two things stand out.

There is an upward trend. Women and men living in America are living longer than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is increasing: While the female advantage in life expectancy used to be extremely small, it has increased substantially over time.

You can check if the points you've listed are applicable to other countries that have data by selecting the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.