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

Revision as of 01:04, 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 have a longer life span than men? And how the advantage has grown in the past? The evidence is limited and we're only able to provide some solutions. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; however, we do not know how much the influence to each of these variables is.

We are aware that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. But this isn't due to the fact that certain biological factors have changed. These are the factors that are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are other issues that are more intricate. 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 you can see, all countries are above the diagonal line of parity - this means that in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a new boy.1

The chart below shows that while there is a female advantage in all countries, the differences across countries could be significant. In Russia women have a longer life span than men, علامات الحمل بولد while in Bhutan the difference is just half one year.

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The advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was lower in countries with higher incomes as compared to the present.
Let's look at how the gender advantage in terms of longevity has changed over time. The chart below shows men and women's life expectancies at the birth in the US in the years 1790 until 2014. Two aspects stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Both genders in America have longer lives than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in life expectancy used be quite small, but it grew substantially during the last century.

Using the option 'Change country in the chart, check that these two points also apply to the other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.