Difference between revisions of "Why Do Women Have Longer Lives Than Men"

Revision as of 17:02, 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 the advantage has grown as time passes? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to support an absolute conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; but we don't know exactly how strong the relative contribution of each of these factors is.

It is known that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. But this is not because of certain non-biological aspects have changed. These variables are evolving. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some are more complex. For example, صبغ الشعر بالاسود 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 above the diagonal parity line ; this means that in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart above shows that while the female advantage is present everywhere, difference between countries is huge. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the gap is less than half a year.

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The female advantage in life expectancy was less in developed countries as compared to the present.
Let's examine the way that female advantages in life expectancy has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US from 1790 until 2014. Two specific points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both genders in America live longer than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is widening: While the advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was quite small however, it has grown significantly over time.

By selecting 'Change Country' on the chart, confirm that the two points apply to the other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.