Difference between revisions of "Why Are Women Living Longer Than Men"

Revision as of 00:33, 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 makes women live longer than men in the present and how have these advantages gotten bigger over time? We only have partial evidence and the evidence isn't strong enough to make a definitive conclusion. We know there are biological, psychological, and environmental factors which play a significant role in women's longevity more than males, we aren't sure how much each factor contributes.

Independently of the exact number of pounds, we know that a large portion of the reason why women live longer than men do today however not as previously, is to be due to the fact that some key non-biological factors have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, علامات الحمل بولد like the fact that men smoke more often. Some 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. As we can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line - it means that in all nations a newborn girl can expect to live for longer than a new boy.1

The chart above shows that while the female advantage exists across all countries, the country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males; while in Bhutan the difference is just half one year.

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In countries with high incomes, the advantage of women in longevity was previously smaller.
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart shows the life expectancy of males and females when they were born in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two distinct points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both genders in America live longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be extremely small however it increased dramatically in the past century.

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