Difference between revisions of "Why Are Women Living Longer Than Men"

Revision as of 07:19, 12 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 are more likely to live longer than men? And why has this advantage gotten larger as time passes? The evidence isn't conclusive and we're left with only partial answers. While we are aware that there are biological, behavioral and environmental variables which all play a part in the longevity of women over men, we don't know how much each one contributes.

In spite of how much number of pounds, we know that at least a portion of the reason why women live longer than men do today, but not previously, has to relate to the fact that certain fundamental non-biological factors have changed. These are the factors that are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are others that are more intricate. 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. As you can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line - this means that in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live for كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور longer than a newborn boy.1

Interestingly, this chart shows that the advantage of women is present everywhere, difference between countries is huge. In Russia women have a longer life span than men; in Bhutan the gap is less than half one year.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was much lower in the richer countries than it is today.
Let's now look at how the gender advantage in longevity has changed with time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancy at birth in the US in the years 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

First, there's an upward trend. Both men as well as women in the US are living much, much longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is widening: While the advantage of women in life expectancy used to be tiny It has significantly increased over time.

It is possible to verify that the points you've listed are applicable to other countries with data by selecting the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور and Sweden.