Difference between revisions of "Why Are Women Living Longer Than Men"

Revision as of 17:53, 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 is the reason women live longer than men? What is the reason is this difference growing as time passes? The evidence isn't conclusive and we're left with only partial answers. We are aware that behavioral, biological and افضل شامبو وبلسم environmental factors contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; however, we aren't sure what the contribution of each of these factors is.

Independently of the exact amount of weight, we are aware that a large portion of the reason women live longer than men do today, but not in the past, has to do with the fact that several significant non-biological elements have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Certain 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. It is clear that every country is above the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl from any country can anticipate to live longer than her brothers.

It is interesting to note 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 just half a year.

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In rich countries the women's advantage in longevity was smaller
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart shows the life expectancy of males and females at birth in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two points stand out.

First, there's an upward trend. Both men and women in the US live much, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's an ever-widening gap: female advantage in life expectancy used to be quite small however it increased dramatically during the last century.

When you click on the option "Change country from the chart, you will be able to verify that these two points are applicable to other countries that have available data: Sweden, France and the UK.