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

Revision as of 22:13, 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 have a longer life span than men? What is the reason is this difference growing over time? We only have a few clues and the evidence isn't sufficient to reach an unambiguous conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women are healthier than men; but we don't know exactly how strong the relative contribution of each one of these factors is.

Independently of the exact amount of weight, we are aware that at least part of the reason women live longer than men do today but not in the past, is to be due to the fact that certain important non-biological aspects have changed. The factors changing are numerous. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are other issues that are more intricate. 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, every country is above the diagonal line of parity - this means in all countries baby girls can expect to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart shows that, although women have an advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries can be significant. In Russia women have a longer life span than men, while in Bhutan the difference is less than half each year.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was smaller in developed countries than it is now.
Let's examine how the advantage of women in longevity has changed over time. The next chart compares male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two specific points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Women and men in the United States live longer than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is getting wider: Although the advantage of women in life expectancy was once extremely small however, it has grown significantly with time.

You can verify that the points you've listed are applicable to other countries with data by clicking the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, علامات الحمل بولد and Sweden.