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

Revision as of 17:02, 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 longer than men, and why does this benefit increase over time? The evidence is sketchy and we're only able to provide limited solutions. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, but we don't know exactly what the contribution of each factor is.

We are aware that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. But it is not because of certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? 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 we can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line - which means that in every country baby girls can expect to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart below shows that although there is a women's advantage in all countries, the differences across countries are often significant. In Russia, women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan there is a difference of less that half a year.

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In the richer countries, the female advantage in longevity was smaller
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at the time of birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

First, كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام there is an upward trend. Men and women in America have longer lives than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, there is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very modest however it increased dramatically during the last century.

You can confirm 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.