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

Revision as of 03:07, 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 is the reason women live longer than men, and why has this advantage increased in the past? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to support an unambiguous conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we aren't sure what the contribution of each factor is.

In spite of the weight, علامات الحمل بولد we know that a large portion of the reason women live longer than men today, but not previously, has to have to do with the fact that a number of fundamental non-biological factors have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, علامات الحمل بولد 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 line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl in all countries can anticipate to live longer than her brother.

This chart illustrates that, although there is a women's advantage in all countries, the differences across countries can be substantial. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the difference is just half each year.

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In wealthy countries, the advantage of women in longevity was smaller
We will now examine how the gender advantage in terms of longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows male and female life expectancy at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two areas stand out.

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.

And second, there is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be very modest however, it has increased significantly in the past century.

It is possible to verify that these points are also applicable to other countries that have data by clicking on the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.