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

Revision as of 21:41, 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 in the past? There isn't much evidence and we're left with only incomplete solutions. Although we know that there are behavioral, biological as well as environmental factors which play a significant role in the longevity of women over men, we do not know what percentage each factor plays in.

We have learned that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. However, this is not due to the fact that certain biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور 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 men and women. We can see that 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

This graph shows that even though women enjoy an advantage across all countries, differences between countries can be significant. In Russia, women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the difference is less than half a calendar year.

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In wealthy countries, كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور the female advantage in longevity was not as great.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart plots the life expectancy of males and females when they were born in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two specific points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Women and men in the United States live longer than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in life expectancy used be quite small but it increased substantially in the past century.

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