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

Revision as of 14:28, 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. Why do women live much longer than men today and كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام why does this benefit increase over time? We only have a few clues and the evidence isn't sufficient to support an unambiguous conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer life spans than men, However, we're not sure what the contribution of each factor is.

It is known that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. But, this is not because of certain non-biological aspects have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are other issues 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 we can see, all countries are above the diagonal line of parity - which means that in every country the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart illustrates that, although women have an advantage in all countries, the differences across countries could be significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than males; while in Bhutan the difference is just half each year.

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In countries with high incomes, the longevity advantage for women was not as great.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancies at the birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two distinct points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. as well as women in the US have a much longer life span longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is increasing: While the advantage of women in life expectancy was very small, it has increased substantially with time.

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