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

Revision as of 00:59, 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. What makes women live much longer than men today, and why does this benefit increase in the past? The evidence is sketchy and we're only able to provide limited answers. 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 strong the relative contribution of each of these factors is.

We are aware that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. But, this is not because of certain non-biological aspects 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. We can see that every country is above the diagonal line of parity - this means that in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live for تحاميل مهبلية longer than a newborn boy.1

This graph shows that although there is a women's advantage everywhere, cross-country differences could be significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan there is a difference of less that half a year.

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In the richer countries, the female advantage in longevity used to be smaller
Let's look at the way that female advantages in longevity has changed over time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US in the years 1790 until 2014. Two aspects stand out.

There is an upward trend. Men as well as 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.

And second, there is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be extremely small however it increased dramatically over the course of the last century.

By selecting 'Change Country' on the chart, verify that these two points apply to the other countries having available data: Sweden, France and the UK.