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

Revision as of 16:19, 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? And why the advantage has grown as time passes? There is only limited evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to reach an absolute conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women are healthier than men; however, we do not know what the contribution of each of these factors is.

In spite of the amount, we can say that at least a portion of the reason why women live longer than men today and not in the past, is to do with the fact that some important non-biological aspects have changed. These are the factors that are changing. Some are well known and 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 for longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart below shows that although women have an advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries could be significant. In Russia women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the difference is less than half a calendar year.

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In the richer countries, the female advantage in longevity was previously smaller.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below illustrates the men and women's life expectancies when they were born in the US in the years 1790 to 2014. Two distinct features stand out.

There is an upward trend. Men and women living in America are living longer than they used to a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, there is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be extremely small but it increased substantially over the last century.

You can check if these principles are also applicable to other countries with data by clicking on the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, تحاميل مهبلية (https://glorynote.com/) and Sweden.