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

Revision as of 13:59, 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 reason women are more likely to live longer than men? And why does this benefit increase as time passes? The evidence is sketchy and we're only able to provide some solutions. We recognize that biological, behavioral 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 significant the impact to each of these variables is.

In spite of the precise amount of weight, we are aware that at a minimum, the reason why women live so much longer than men today but not in the past, is to relate to the fact that certain key non-biological factors have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and ابر التخسيس relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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, 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. It is clear that all countries are over the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl from any country can anticipate to live longer than her older brother.

Interestingly, this chart shows that the advantage of women exists across all countries, the country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women are 10 years older than men. In Bhutan the gap is just half an hour.

__S.17__
__S.19__
The advantage women had in life expectancy was smaller in developed countries that it is today.
We will now examine how the female advantage in longevity has changed with time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancy at the time of birth in the US between 1790-2014. Two distinct features stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend: Men and 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 growing: Although the advantage of women in life expectancy was extremely small It has significantly increased in the past.

When you click on the option "Change country from the chart, confirm that the two points also apply to the other countries having available data: Sweden, France and the UK.