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

Revision as of 03:04, 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 reason why women have a longer life span than men? And why the advantage has grown over time? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to support an absolute conclusion. We know that behavioral, صبغ الشعر بالاسود biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we aren't sure how significant the impact of each one of these factors is.

We have learned that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. However this isn't because of certain non-biological factors have changed. These factors are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are others 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, صبغ الشعر بالاسود 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 parity line - which means that in every country a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

Interestingly, this chart shows that while the female advantage exists everywhere, the country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males; while in Bhutan the gap is less than half an hour.

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In countries with high incomes, the advantage of women in longevity used to be smaller
We will now examine how the gender advantage in life expectancy has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancies at birth in the US between 1790 to 2014. Two aspects stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Women and men 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.

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

Using the option 'Change country' on the chart, you will be able to confirm that the two points apply to other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.