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

Revision as of 11:22, 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. Why do women live much longer than men today and why does this benefit increase in the past? The evidence is sketchy and we only have some solutions. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; However, we're not sure how strong the relative contribution of each factor is.

We know that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. But this is not due to the fact that certain biological factors have changed. These variables are evolving. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some are more complex. 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 over the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl in every country can expect to live longer than her older brother.

It is interesting to note that the advantage of women is present everywhere, difference between countries is huge. In Russia women are 10 years older than men, while in Bhutan the gap is less than half each year.

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In the richer countries, تحاميل مهبلية the female advantage in longevity used to be smaller
Let's now look at the way that female advantages in life expectancy has changed over time. The next chart plots the male and female lifespans when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two areas stand تحاميل مهبلية out.

There is an upward trend. Men and women in America live longer than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an increasing gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be quite small, but it grew substantially over the course of the last century.

When you click on the option "Change country in the chart, determine if these two points are applicable to other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.