Difference between revisions of "Why Do Women Have Longer Lives Than Men"

Revision as of 21:13, 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 reason why women are more likely to live longer than men? Why has this advantage gotten larger as time passes? The evidence isn't conclusive and we have only partial solutions. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, but we don't know exactly how significant the impact to each of these variables is.

Independently of the exact amount of weight, we are aware that at a minimum, the reason why women live longer than men in the present and not previously, has to have to do with the fact that some important non-biological aspects have changed. These factors 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. It is clear that every country is over the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl in all countries can be expected to live for longer than her brother.

This graph shows that even though women enjoy an advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries can be substantial. In Russia, العاب زوجية women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan the gap is only half a year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
The advantage of women in life expectancy was much lower in developed countries as compared to the present.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the life expectancy of males and females at birth in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two specific points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both men and women in the US are living much, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in life expectancy used to be quite small however, العاب زوجية it has increased significantly during the last century.

You can check if the points you've listed are applicable to other countries that have data by clicking on the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.