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

Revision as of 13:18, 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? What is the reason is this difference growing over time? We only have partial evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to reach an informed conclusion. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women are healthier than men; However, we're not sure what the contribution of each one of these factors is.

In spite of the amount, we can say that a large portion of the reason why women live so much longer than men today and not previously, اوضاع الجماع is to be due to the fact that certain fundamental non-biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others are more complex. 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 we can see, all countries are above the diagonal line of parity - this means in all countries that a baby girl can be expected to live longer than a new boy.1

This chart illustrates that, even though women enjoy an advantage in all countries, the differences across countries are often significant. In Russia women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the gap is less that half a year.

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In rich countries the female advantage in longevity was previously smaller.
We will now examine how the advantage of women in terms of longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows the men and اوضاع الجماع women's life expectancies at birth in the US in the years 1790 to 2014. Two areas stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women in America live longer than they used to a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in life expectancy used be extremely small, but it grew substantially in the past century.

You can check if these are applicable to other countries with data by clicking the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.