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

Revision as of 01:39, 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. Why do women live much longer than men today and why has this advantage increased over time? We only have a few clues and the evidence is not sufficient to support an absolute conclusion. We know there are behavioral, biological and environmental variables that all play a role in the longevity of women over males, ابر التخسيس we aren't sure what percentage each factor plays in.

In spite of how much amount of weight, we are aware that a large portion of the reason why women live so much longer than men do today and ابر التخسيس not in the past, is to have to do with the fact that certain fundamental non-biological factors have changed. These variables are evolving. 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. As we can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line , this means that in all countries that a baby girl can be expected to live longer than a new boy.1

The chart below shows that even though women enjoy an advantage in all countries, the differences across countries could be significant. In Russia, women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan, the difference is less than half a calendar year.

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The advantage of women in life expectancy was much lower in the richer countries that it is today.
We will now examine how the female advantage in terms of longevity has changed over time. The chart below shows gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at the birth in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two areas stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Men as well as women in the US have a much longer life span longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is a widening gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be very small but it increased substantially in the past century.

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