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

Revision as of 02:54, 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 reason why women are more likely to live longer than men? What is the reason the advantage has grown over time? There isn't much evidence and we only have some 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, علامات الحمل بولد we do not know how significant the impact of each factor is.

We have learned that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. But, this is not due to the fact that certain non-biological aspects have changed. These variables are evolving. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Other 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 line of parity - this means that in all countries a newborn girl can expect to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

It is interesting to note that the advantage of women is present everywhere, cross-country differences are large. In Russia women are 10 years older than men; in Bhutan the difference is just half each year.

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The advantage of women in life expectancy was smaller in rich countries as compared to the present.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart shows the male and female lifespans when they were born in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two things stand out.

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

Second, there's an ever-widening gap: female advantage in life expectancy used to be extremely small however, it has increased significantly over the course of the last century.

By selecting 'Change Country from the chart, you will be able to check that these two points also apply to the other countries with available information: Sweden, France and علامات الحمل بولد the UK.