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

Revision as of 13:14, 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 are more likely to live longer than men? Why does this benefit increase as time passes? The evidence isn't conclusive and we're only able to provide some solutions. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women are healthier than men; but we don't know exactly what the contribution of each of these factors is.

Independently of the exact number of pounds, we know that at least a portion of the reason women live so much longer than men do today but not in the past, is to be due to the fact that certain significant non-biological elements have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and علامات الحمل بولد - anchor, 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, علامات الحمل بولد 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. As you can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line - this means that in all countries a newborn girl can expect to live for longer than a new boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that although the female advantage exists everywhere, the global differences are significant. In Russia, women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan there is a difference of less than half a calendar year.

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The advantage of women in life expectancy was smaller in countries with higher incomes than it is now.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two distinct features stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Women and men in the United States live longer than they used to a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in life expectancy used to be very small however it increased dramatically in the past century.

If you select the option "Change country by country' in the chart, you can confirm that the two points apply to the other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.