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

Revision as of 18:29, 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 how has this advantage increased in the past? We only have a few clues and the evidence is not sufficient to support a definitive conclusion. 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 much the influence of each factor is.

We have learned that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. However it is not due to the fact that certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and تحاميل مهبلية 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, 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. We can see that every country is above the diagonal parity line , which means that in every country a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

Interestingly, this chart shows that while the female advantage exists everywhere, the difference between countries is huge. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than males; while in Bhutan the difference is just half a year.

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In countries with high incomes, the longevity advantage for women was not as great.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancies at birth in the US between 1790 to 2014. Two specific points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Women and men in America live longer than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in life expectancy used to be very modest however, it has increased significantly over the course of the last century.

Using the option 'Change country by country' in the chart, you will be able to determine if these two points also apply to the other countries having available data: Sweden, France and the UK.