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

Revision as of 22:39, 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 main reason women live longer than men? And why is this difference growing as time passes? The evidence is limited and we're left with only some solutions. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we aren't sure how strong the relative contribution to each of these variables is.

Independently of the exact weight, we know that at least a portion of the reason women live so much longer than men in the present, but not previously, is to be due to the fact that certain key non-biological factors have changed. The factors changing are numerous. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Other 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. It is clear that every country is above the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl from every country could anticipate to live longer than her younger brother.

This graph shows that although women have an advantage across all countries, differences between countries are often significant. In Russia, women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan, the difference is less than half a calendar year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
In rich countries the female advantage in longevity was smaller
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below shows men and women's life expectancies at the birth in the US between 1790 until 2014. Two aspects stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. and women in the US live much, much longer than they did 100 years 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 terms of life expectancy used be very small, but it grew substantially over the course of the last century.

It is possible to verify that these are applicable to other countries that have data by clicking on the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام Sweden.