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

Revision as of 00:45, 14 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 main reason women are more likely to live longer than men? Why is this difference growing as time passes? The evidence is limited and we only have incomplete answers. 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 do not know how much the influence of each of these factors is.

In spite of how much weight, we know that a large portion of the reason women live longer than men in the present but not in the past, has to do with the fact that several significant non-biological elements have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some are more complex. For example, زيوت تطويل الشعر 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. As we can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line ; this means that in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live longer than a new boy.1

The chart below shows that although women have an advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries are often significant. In Russia, women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the gap is only half a year.

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The advantage of women in life expectancy was smaller in developed countries as compared to the present.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The following chart shows the life expectancy of males and females when they were born in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two distinct points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. and women in the US live a lot, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, زيوت تطويل الشعر there is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in life expectancy used be very small however, it has increased significantly over the last century.

It is possible to 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.