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

Revision as of 13:16, 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 reason why women are more likely to live longer than men? And why the advantage has grown as time passes? The evidence is sketchy and we have only incomplete answers. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; but we don't know exactly how significant the impact of each factor is.

Independently of the exact amount, we can say that at a minimum, the reason women live so much longer than men do today, but not in the past, is to be due to the fact that some 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. Some 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, especially for survivors, كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام 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 that a baby girl can be expected to live longer than a new boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that although the female advantage is present everywhere, cross-country differences are large. In Russia women are 10 years older than men, while in Bhutan the gap is less than half an hour.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was less in rich countries that it is today.
Let's examine how the gender advantage in terms of longevity has changed over time. The next chart shows male and female life expectancies at birth in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two areas stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Both genders in the United States 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 very small, it has increased substantially over time.

You can confirm that these points are also applicable to other countries that have data by clicking the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.