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

Revision as of 09:28, 8 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 why the advantage has grown as time passes? We only have a few clues and the evidence is not sufficient to support an informed conclusion. Although we know that there are biological, اوضاع الجماع behavioral as well as environmental factors that play an integral role in the longevity of women over men, we don't know the extent to which each factor plays a role.

We are aware that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. But, this is not because of certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. These factors are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are other issues that are more intricate. 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 line of parity - this means in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live longer than a new boy.1

This graph shows that while there is a female advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men; in Bhutan the gap is just half a year.

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In the richer countries, the advantage of women in longevity was smaller
Let's look at the way that female advantages in longevity has changed over time. The chart below shows gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at birth in the US during the period 1790-2014. Two points stand out.

There is an upward trend. as well as women in the US live a lot, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, there is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in life expectancy used to be quite small however, it has increased significantly in the past century.

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