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

Revision as of 01:59, 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 longer than men in the present, and ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور why has this advantage increased in the past? The evidence is limited and we have only partial answers. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer life spans than men, However, we're not sure how much the influence of each one of these factors is.

We have learned that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. But it is not due to the fact that certain biological factors have changed. These factors are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some 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. We can see that all countries are above the diagonal parity line , this means in all countries a newborn girl can expect to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that, while the advantage for women exists across all countries, the difference between countries is huge. In Russia women live 10 years longer 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 less in the richer countries that it is today.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancies at birth in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two aspects stand out.

First, there's an upward trend. Men and women in the US live much, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, there is a widening gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be quite small, but it grew substantially over the last century.

You can check if these are applicable to other countries with data by clicking on the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.