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

Revision as of 02:45, 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 makes women live longer than men, and why does this benefit increase over time? We only have a few clues and the evidence isn't sufficient to reach a definitive conclusion. Although we know that there are behavioral, biological and environmental variables which play a significant role in women who live longer than men, we don't know the extent to which each factor plays a role.

We have learned that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. However this is not because of certain non-biological factors have changed. These variables are evolving. Some are well known and 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. We can see that every country is above the diagonal parity line ; this means in all countries that a baby girl can be expected to live for longer than a new boy.1

Interestingly, this chart shows that although the female advantage exists across all countries, the global differences are significant. In Russia, women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan, the difference is just half a year.

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In countries with high incomes, the women's advantage in longevity was previously smaller.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancies at birth in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two things stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Both genders living in America are living 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 increasing gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be extremely small, كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام but it grew substantially during the last century.

You can check if these points are also applicable to other countries that have data by clicking the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.