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

Revision as of 19:06, 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 have a longer life span than men? What is the reason is this difference growing as time passes? There isn't much evidence and افضل شامبو وبلسم we're only able to provide some solutions. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women have longer life spans than men, However, افضل شامبو وبلسم we're not sure how strong the relative contribution of each factor is.

In spite of how much amount, we can say that at a minimum, the reason why women live so much longer than men today but not previously, has to do with the fact that a number of 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. Some 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. We can see that every country is over the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl from every country could expect to live longer than her brother.

This chart illustrates that, even though women enjoy an advantage across all countries, differences between countries could be significant. In Russia women have a longer life span than men. In Bhutan the gap is less than half one year.

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In rich countries the women's advantage in longevity was previously smaller.
Let's look at how the gender advantage in life expectancy has changed over time. The chart below shows men and women's life expectancies at the time of birth in the US in the years 1790-2014. Two points stand out.

First, there's an upward trend. Men and women in the US live a lot, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is growing: Although the female advantage in life expectancy used to be extremely small, it has increased substantially in the past.

When you click on the option "Change country in the chart, you are able to check that these two points apply to other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.