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

Revision as of 15:19, 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. What's the reason why women have a longer life span than men? And how does this benefit increase over time? There isn't much evidence and we only have limited solutions. While we are aware that there are biological, behavioral and environmental factors which play a significant role in the longevity of women over males, it isn't clear the extent to which each factor plays a role.

It is known that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. But this is not because of certain biological factors have changed. What are the factors that are changing? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, تحاميل مهبلية like the fact that men smoke more often. Some 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. It is clear that all countries are over the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl from every country could expect to live longer than her brother.

This chart is interesting in that it shows that although the female advantage is present everywhere, country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women have a longer life span than men; in Bhutan the gap is just half one year.

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The advantage women had in terms of life expectancy was lower in the richer countries than it is now.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart compares the life expectancy of males and females when they were born in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two areas stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Women and men living in America are living longer than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in life expectancy used to be extremely small however, تحاميل مهبلية (to Glorynote) it has increased significantly during the last century.

When you click on the option "Change country from the chart, you are able to determine if these two points apply to the other countries having available data: Sweden, France and the UK.