Difference between revisions of "Why Do Women Live Longer Than Men"

Revision as of 10:54, 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 are more likely to live longer than men? What is the reason is this difference growing over time? The evidence is sketchy and we're left with only some solutions. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; However, we're not sure how significant the impact of each factor is.

Independently of the exact number of pounds, we know that at least part of the reason women live longer than men do today and not previously, is to be due to the fact that some fundamental non-biological factors have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others are more complex. 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, علامات الحمل بولد 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 we can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line - which means that in every country the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a new boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that the advantage of women is present everywhere, cross-country differences are large. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan, the difference is less than half a calendar year.

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The advantage for women in terms of life expectancy was lower in countries with higher incomes as compared to the present.
Let's examine the way that female advantages in longevity has changed with time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two things stand out.

First, علامات الحمل بولد (his comment is here) there is an upward trend. Men and women in America live longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is widening: While the advantage of women in life expectancy used to be extremely small, it has increased substantially over time.

When you click on the option "Change country in the chart, you will be able to confirm that the two points are applicable to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.