Difference between revisions of "Why Are Women Living Longer Than Men"

Revision as of 02:18, 10 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 so much longer than men today and how have these advantages gotten bigger over time? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not strong enough to make an unambiguous conclusion. While we are aware that there are biological, psychological, and environmental factors that all play a role in women's longevity more than men, we don't know how much each one contributes.

In spite of how much number of pounds, we know that at least a portion of the reason women live so much longer than men do today but not in the past, has to be due to the fact that several significant non-biological elements have changed. What are the factors that are changing? Some are well known and كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام 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, كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام 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 you can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line - which means that in every country the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a new boy.1

This graph shows that while there is a female advantage everywhere, cross-country differences could be significant. In Russia women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan, the difference is less than half a calendar year.

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The advantage of women in life expectancy was less in rich countries than it is now.
Let's examine the way that female advantages in terms of longevity has changed over time. The next chart compares male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two things stand out.

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

Second, the gap is widening: While the advantage of women in life expectancy used to be tiny but it has risen significantly over time.

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