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

Latest revision as of 06:35, 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? And صبغ الشعر بالاسود how has this advantage gotten larger over time? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence isn't strong enough to make an informed conclusion. We know there are behavioral, biological and environmental factors which all play a part in women living longer than men, we do not know what percentage each factor plays in.

In spite of the precise weight, we know that at least a portion of the reason why women live so much longer than men but not in the past, has to relate to the fact that several significant non-biological elements have changed. What are these changing factors? 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 the newborn girl is likely to live longer than a new boy.1

The chart below shows that while there is a female advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries can be substantial. In Russia, women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the difference is just half a year.

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In countries with high incomes, the longevity advantage for women used to be smaller
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart compares the male and female lifespans when they were born in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both genders living in America are living longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's an ever-widening gap: female advantage in life expectancy used be extremely small but it increased substantially in the past 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.