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

Revision as of 11:19, 11 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 women are more likely to live longer than men? And how does this benefit increase over time? We only have a few clues and the evidence isn't sufficient to reach an informed conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer life spans than men, but we don't know exactly how strong the relative contribution of each one of these factors is.

Independently of the exact amount of weight, we are aware that a large portion of the reason women live so much longer than men do today, but not previously, is to be due to the fact that some key non-biological factors have changed. These are the factors that are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Certain 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, صبغ الشعر بالاسود 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 all countries are above the diagonal parity line - which means that in every country baby girls can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that although the female advantage is present everywhere, صبغ الشعر بالاسود (learn more about Glorynote) difference between countries is huge. 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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The advantage of women in life expectancy was less in rich countries than it is now.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancy at the time of birth in the US during the period 1790-2014. Two points stand out.

First, there's an upward trend: Men and women in the US are living much, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is a widening gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be very modest but it increased substantially over the course of the last century.

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