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

Revision as of 18:32, 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 longer than men and why have these advantages gotten bigger in the past? There isn't much evidence and we're only able to provide incomplete solutions. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; However, we're not sure how strong the relative contribution of each factor is.

It is known that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. However this is not because of certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. These variables are evolving. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others are more complicated. 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 above the diagonal parity line - this means that in all countries baby girls can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

The chart above shows that while the female advantage exists across all countries, the difference between countries is huge. In Russia, women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the gap is only half a year.

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In the richer countries, the women's advantage in longevity was smaller
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart shows male and female life expectancy at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two aspects stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Women and men in America have longer lives than they used to a century 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 terms of life expectancy used to be very small however, it has increased significantly during the last century.

It is possible to verify that the points you've listed are applicable to other countries that have data by clicking on the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and العاب زوجية Sweden.