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

Revision as of 01:24, 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? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to draw an unambiguous conclusion. We know there are biological, behavioral and environmental factors that play an integral role in the longevity of women over males, it isn't clear how much each one contributes.

In spite of the amount of weight, we are aware that at a minimum, the reason why women live so much longer than men in the present but not previously, has to have to do with the fact that several important non-biological aspects have changed. What are the factors that are changing? Some are well known and ابر التخسيس 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. As we can see, all countries are above the diagonal line of parity - this means that in all countries a newborn girl can expect to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart below shows that although women have an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences are often significant. In Russia, women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan there is a difference of less that half a year.

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In wealthy countries, the women's advantage in longevity was previously smaller.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart shows male and ابر التخسيس female life expectancy at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two distinct features stand out.

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

The gap is getting wider: Although the advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was quite small however, it has grown significantly with time.

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