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

Revision as of 17:11, 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 makes women live much longer than men today and how have these advantages gotten bigger in the past? The evidence isn't conclusive and we're left with only incomplete answers. Although we know that there are behavioral, biological and environmental factors that play an integral role in the longevity of women over males, we aren't sure the extent to which each factor plays a role.

Independently of the exact number of pounds, we know that at least part of the reason why women live longer than men in the present, but not in the past, has to do with the fact that some key non-biological factors have changed. These factors are changing. 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, ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور (Read the Full Report) 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. We can see that all countries are above the diagonal parity line , this means in all countries baby girls can expect to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

This graph shows that although there is a women's advantage in all countries, the differences across countries can be significant. In Russia women have a longer life span than men; in Bhutan the gap is less than half an hour.

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The advantage for women in terms of life expectancy was lower in the richer countries as compared to the present.
We will now examine how the female advantage in longevity has changed over time. The next chart plots male and female life expectancies at birth in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two distinct points stand out.

First, there's 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.

The gap is getting wider: Although the advantage of women in life expectancy was once quite small It has significantly increased with time.

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