Difference between revisions of "Why Are Women Living Longer Than Men"

Revision as of 00:27, 13 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 why does this benefit increase over time? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not strong enough to make a definitive conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; however, we do not know how much the influence to each of these variables is.

Independently of the exact amount of weight, we are aware that a large portion of the reason women live so much longer than men, but not in the past, has to be due to the fact that a number of fundamental non-biological factors have changed. What are the factors that are changing? 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. It is clear that all countries are above the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl from any country can anticipate to live longer than her brother.

The chart below shows that while there is a female advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries can be significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men; in Bhutan the gap is just half each year.

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In wealthy countries, 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 gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at the birth in the US during the period 1790-2014. Two aspects stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both men and women in the US live a lot, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, تحاميل مهبلية, click the following page, there is an increasing gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be very small however it increased dramatically over the last century.

Using the option 'Change country in the chart, you can confirm that the two points are also applicable to the other countries having available data: Sweden, France and the UK.