Difference between revisions of "Why Are Women Living Longer Than Men"

Revision as of 07:59, 10 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? And صبغ الشعر بالاسود (simply click the following post) why the advantage has grown as time passes? We only have partial evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to support an unambiguous conclusion. We know there are biological, behavioral as well as environmental factors which play a significant role in women living longer than men, we do not know how much each one contributes.

In spite of how much amount, we can say that a large portion of the reason women live so much longer than men, but not previously, is to do with the fact that some significant non-biological elements have changed. What are these changing 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, 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. It is clear that all countries are above the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl from any country can expect to live longer than her brothers.

The chart above shows 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 female advantage in terms of life expectancy was lower in rich countries that it is today.
Let's look at how the female advantage in longevity has changed over time. The next chart plots male and female life expectancies when they were born in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two distinct points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both genders in the United States live longer than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is getting wider: Although the advantage of women in life expectancy was tiny It has significantly increased with time.

Using the option 'Change country in the chart, you can verify that these two points are also applicable to other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.