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

Revision as of 15:27, 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 so longer than men and how does this benefit increase over time? We only have a few clues and the evidence is not sufficient to support an informed conclusion. We know there are biological, behavioral and environmental variables that all play a role in women living longer than men, we don't know how much each factor contributes.

We have learned that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. However this is not because of certain biological or تحاميل مهبلية non-biological factors have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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 parity line , this means that in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live longer than a newborn boy.1

It is interesting to note that the advantage of women exists across all countries, the country-specific differences are 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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The advantage women had in life expectancy was less in the richer countries than it is today.
Let's now look at how the gender advantage in terms of longevity has changed over time. The chart below shows men and women's life expectancies at birth in the US between 1790-2014. Two aspects 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 increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be quite small however, it has increased significantly over the last century.

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