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

Revision as of 08:45, 7 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 have a longer life span than men? And how does this benefit increase over time? There isn't much evidence and we're left with only some answers. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women are healthier than men; however, we aren't sure how strong the relative contribution of each of these factors is.

In spite of the amount of weight, we are aware that at a minimum, the reason why women live so much longer than men in the present however not as previously, has to have to do with the fact that some important non-biological aspects have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور (just click the following internet site) like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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. As we can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line - it means that in all nations baby girls can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that although the female advantage exists in all countries, global differences are significant. In Russia women have a longer life span than men, while in Bhutan the gap is just half each year.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was less in rich countries that it is today.
We will now examine how the advantage of women in longevity has changed over time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancy at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Women and men in America have longer lives than they used to 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is an increasing gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be very small, but it grew substantially over the last century.

If you select the option "Change country by country' in the chart, you are able to confirm that the two points apply to other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.