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

Revision as of 23:54, 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? And why the advantage has grown as time passes? We only have a few clues and the evidence isn't strong enough to make an absolute conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; however, we do not know what the contribution of each one of these factors is.

We know that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. But this is not because of certain non-biological factors have changed. What are the factors that are changing? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Certain 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 all countries are over the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl in all countries can anticipate to live longer than her older brother.

This graph shows that although there is a women's advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries can be significant. In Russia women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan, the difference is only half a year.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was less in the richer countries than it is now.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancies at the birth in the US during the period 1790-2014. Two aspects stand زيوت تطويل الشعر out.

There is an upward trend. Women and زيوت تطويل الشعر men in America have longer lives than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is an increasing gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be very small however it increased dramatically over the last century.

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