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

Revision as of 15:32, 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 why women have a longer life span than men? Why is this difference growing over time? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to reach an absolute conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we do not know how significant the impact to each of these variables is.

In spite of the weight, we know that a large portion of the reason women live longer than men do today but not previously, is to be due to the fact that several 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. Some are more complex. For علامات الحمل بولد; other, 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, every country is above the diagonal line of parity - this means that in all countries baby girls can expect to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that although the female advantage is present everywhere, global differences are significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men, while in Bhutan the gap is just half each year.

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The advantage of women in life expectancy was smaller in the richer countries that it is today.
Let's look at the way that female advantages in life expectancy has changed over time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancy at the time of birth in the US during the period 1790-2014. Two points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Men and women in the United States live longer than they used to 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an increasing gap: علامات الحمل بولد The female advantage in life expectancy used to be quite small, but it grew substantially over the course of the last century.

It is possible to verify that these principles are also applicable to other countries that have data by selecting the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.