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

Revision as of 01:11, 14 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 live longer than men? What is the reason has this advantage gotten larger in the past? The evidence isn't conclusive and كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور we only have incomplete solutions. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, but we don't know exactly what the contribution of each one of these factors is.

In spite of how much weight, we know that a large portion of the reason women live longer than men, but not in the past, 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. 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, every country is above the diagonal parity line , this means in all countries baby girls can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that although the female advantage exists in all countries, country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women are 10 years older than males; while in Bhutan the difference is just half one year.

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In countries with high incomes, the advantage of women in longevity was not as great.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The following chart shows male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two things stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women in the United States live longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is a widening gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be very small, كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور but it grew substantially over the last century.

If you select the option "Change country by country' in the chart, you are able to verify that these two points apply to other countries that have available information: Sweden, France and the UK.