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

Revision as of 03:21, 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 are more likely to live longer than men? Why is this difference growing as time passes? We only have a few clues and the evidence isn't sufficient to draw an informed conclusion. While we are aware that there are biological, psychological and environmental variables which all play a part in women living longer than males, we aren't sure the extent to which each factor plays a role.

We have learned that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. But it is not because of certain non-biological aspects have changed. What are these changing factors? 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, 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 over the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl in every country can expect to live longer than her younger brother.

Interestingly, this chart shows that while the female advantage exists everywhere, the cross-country differences are large. In Russia women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the difference is just half a year.

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In rich countries the female advantage in longevity used to be smaller
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the male and علامات الحمل بولد female life expectancy at the birth in the US between 1790 to 2014. Two things stand علامات الحمل بولد; https://glorynote.com/%D8%B9%D9%84%D8%A7%D9%85%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AD%D9%85%D9%84-%D8%A8%D9%88%D9%84%D8%AF/, out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women 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.

Second, there's an ever-widening gap: female advantage in life expectancy used be very modest but it increased substantially over the course of the last century.

When you click on the option "Change country' on the chart, you can determine if these two points are also applicable to the other countries having available data: Sweden, France and the UK.