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

Revision as of 17:49, 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. Why do women live so more than men do today and why does this benefit increase in the past? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to support an informed conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we aren't sure how much the influence of each one of these factors is.

We know that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. But it is not due to the fact that certain biological factors have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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 كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور (click here now) men and women. As we can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line ; this means in all countries baby girls can expect to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart above shows that while the female advantage exists in all countries, cross-country differences are large. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men; in Bhutan the gap is just half one year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
The female advantage in terms of life expectancy was lower in rich countries as compared to the present.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The following chart shows the life expectancy of males and females at birth in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two specific points stand out.

First, there's an upward trend. Both men as well as women in the US are living much, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is increasing: While the female advantage in terms of life expectancy was very small however, it has grown significantly over time.

You can verify that the points you've listed are applicable to other countries that have data by clicking the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.