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

Revision as of 16:19, 11 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 live longer than men? What is the reason has this advantage gotten larger over time? We only have partial evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to draw an informed conclusion. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, but we don't know exactly how much the influence of each of these factors is.

In spite of the precise amount of weight, we are aware that a large portion of the reason why women live longer than men today however not as previously, is to be due to the fact that some significant non-biological elements have changed. These variables are evolving. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some are more complex. For اوضاع الجماع 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 you can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line - this means that in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

Interestingly, اوضاع الجماع this chart shows that the advantage of women is present everywhere, cross-country differences are large. In Russia, women live for 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan, the difference is less that half a year.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was smaller in countries with higher incomes than it is now.
Let's look at how the female advantage in longevity has changed with time. The chart below shows gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at the birth in the US from 1790 until 2014. Two things stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend: Men and women in the US are living much, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is getting wider: Although the advantage of women in life expectancy used to be very small It has significantly increased over time.

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