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

Revision as of 01:57, 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's the main reason women have a longer life span than men? What is the reason the advantage has grown in the past? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence isn't strong enough to make a definitive conclusion. We know there are biological, psychological as well as environmental factors that play an integral role in women's longevity more than men, we do not know what percentage each factor plays in.

In spite of the precise amount, we can say that at least a portion of the reason why women live so much longer than men and not in the past, is to relate to the fact that several fundamental non-biological factors have changed. These variables are evolving. 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 all countries are above the diagonal parity line , which means that in every country the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

Interestingly, this chart shows that while the female advantage exists in all countries, cross-country differences are large. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan, the difference is less than half a calendar year.

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In rich countries the longevity advantage for women was smaller
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows male and زيوت تطويل الشعر female life expectancies at birth in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two areas stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. 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.

The gap is growing: Although the female advantage in life expectancy used to be tiny It has significantly increased with time.

You can verify that these principles are also applicable to other countries with information by clicking on the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and زيوت تطويل الشعر Sweden.