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

Revision as of 11:46, 8 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. Why do women live longer than men and how does this benefit increase over time? We only have partial evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to draw an informed conclusion. Although we know that there are behavioral, biological and environmental factors which play a significant role in the longevity of women over males, we aren't sure how much each one contributes.

We have learned that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. However, this is not because of certain non-biological aspects have changed. What are these new factors? 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, تحاميل مهبلية 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 in all countries a newborn girl can expect to live for longer than a new boy.1

This chart shows that, while there is a female advantage in all countries, the differences across countries can be substantial. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men, while in Bhutan the gap is just half each year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
In the richer countries, the longevity advantage for women was previously smaller.
Let's now look at how the gender advantage in terms of longevity has changed over time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancies at the time of birth in the US between 1790 to 2014. Two aspects stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both men as well as 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 widening: While the female advantage in life expectancy was once extremely small but it has risen significantly with time.

When you click on the option "Change country' on the chart, you can confirm that the two points are also applicable to other countries that have available information: Sweden, France and the UK.