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

Revision as of 01:25, 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's the main reason women have a longer life span than men? And how is this difference growing as time passes? The evidence is limited and we only have incomplete answers. We know that biological, behavioral and علامات الحمل بولد (redirected here) environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we do not know what the contribution of each one of these factors is.

In spite of how much number of pounds, we know that at least part of the reason why women live longer than men and not in the past, has to have to do with the fact that certain significant non-biological elements have changed. The factors changing are numerous. 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 every country is over the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl in every country can expect to live longer than her brother.

It is interesting to note that, while the advantage for women is present everywhere, country-specific differences are huge. In Russia, women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan, the difference is less that half a year.

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In rich countries the female advantage in longevity was not as great.
We will now examine how the gender advantage in longevity has changed with time. The next chart shows male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two aspects stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend: Men and women in the US live a lot, much longer than they did 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 female advantage in life expectancy was once extremely small but it has risen significantly over time.

Using the option 'Change country by country' in the chart, determine if these two points also apply to other countries that have available data: Sweden, France and the UK.