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

Revision as of 21:26, 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 so more than men do today and why is this difference growing over time? There is only limited evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to support an absolute conclusion. We know there are biological, psychological as well as environmental factors which all play a part in women who live longer than men, we don't know how much each factor contributes.

In spite of how much number of pounds, we know that at a minimum, the reason women live longer than men today and not in the past, is to do with the fact that some significant non-biological elements have changed. These are the factors that are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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. As we can see, ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور every country is above the diagonal line of parity - this means that in all countries a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

It is interesting to note that, while the advantage for women exists across all countries, the cross-country differences are large. In Russia, women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the gap is less that half a year.

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In the richer countries, the longevity advantage for women was not as great.
Let's now look at the way that female advantages in terms of longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two distinct points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Men and women living in America are living longer 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 increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be quite small however, it has increased significantly over the last century.

You can check if these principles are also applicable to other countries that have data by clicking the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.