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

Revision as of 19:17, 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 have a longer life span than men? Why has this advantage gotten larger as time passes? The evidence is limited and we only have partial solutions. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; but we don't know exactly how much the influence of each one of these factors is.

In spite of the amount, we can say that at least a portion of the reason women live so much longer than men today however not as in the past, كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام has to have to do with the fact that some important non-biological aspects have changed. What are these changing 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 you can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line , it means that in all nations the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a new boy.1

This chart illustrates that, while there is a female advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries can be significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than males; while in Bhutan the difference is less than half a year.

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In countries with high incomes, the women's advantage in longevity was not as great.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The following chart shows the male and female lifespans when they were born in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two distinct features stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Women and men in the United States live longer than they used to 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is getting wider: Although the female advantage in terms of life expectancy was quite small however, it has grown significantly over time.

When you click on the option "Change country' on the chart, you can check that these two points are applicable to other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.