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

Latest revision as of 06:16, 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 and how is this difference growing in the past? There isn't much evidence and we're left with only limited solutions. We know there are biological, behavioral and environmental factors that all play a role in women living longer than men, we do not know how much each factor contributes.

In spite of the precise amount, we can say that at least a portion of the reason why women live so much longer than men, but not previously, is to be due to the fact that a number of important non-biological aspects have changed. What are these factors that have changed? 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. We can see that every country is above the diagonal parity line - this means that in all countries that a baby girl can be expected to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart below shows that even though women enjoy an advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries can be significant. In Russia, women live for ابر التخسيس 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the gap is less than half a calendar year.

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In countries with high incomes, the female advantage in longevity was not as great.
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at birth in the US in the years 1790 to 2014. Two things stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both men and women in the US live a lot, much longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is growing: Although the advantage of women in life expectancy was once tiny however, it has grown significantly with time.

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