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

Revision as of 12:46, 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 over time? We only have partial evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to draw an unambiguous conclusion. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women are healthier than men; however, we aren't sure what the contribution of each of these factors is.

In spite of the precise weight, we know that at least part of the reason why women live so much longer than men but not in the past, is to have to do with the fact that a number of significant non-biological elements 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 زيوت تطويل الشعر 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, زيوت تطويل الشعر 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. It is clear that all countries are above the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl in all countries can anticipate to live longer than her brother.

The chart above shows that, while the advantage for women is present everywhere, difference between countries is huge. In Russia, women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the gap is less that half a year.

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The advantage of women in life expectancy was much lower in countries with higher incomes than it is now.
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancies at the birth in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two things stand out.

First, there's an upward trend. 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, there's a widening gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very small, but it grew substantially over the course of the last century.

It is possible to verify that the points you've listed are applicable to other countries with data by selecting the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.