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

Revision as of 17:37, 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. Why do women live much longer than men today and how is this difference growing over time? The evidence is sketchy and we have only limited solutions. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; but we don't know exactly how much the influence of each one of these factors is.

We know that women live longer than men, ابر التخسيس (related webpage) regardless of weight. But it is not due to the fact that certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Other are more complicated. For example, ابر التخسيس 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. We can see that every country is above the diagonal parity line ; which means that in every country that a baby girl can be expected to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

It is interesting to note that while the female advantage exists everywhere, the cross-country differences are large. In Russia women live for 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan, the difference is just half a year.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was smaller in developed countries that it is today.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at the birth in the US from 1790-2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend: Men as well as women in the US have a much longer life span longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is growing: Although the advantage of women in life expectancy used to be quite small, it has increased substantially over time.

You can check if the points you've listed are applicable to other countries that have data by selecting the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.