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

Revision as of 15:54, 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 why women have a longer life span than men? Why has this advantage gotten larger as time passes? We only have partial evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to support an absolute conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; however, we aren't sure how strong the relative contribution to each of these variables is.

In spite of the weight, we know that at least a portion of the reason why women live longer than men in the present however not as in the past, is to do with the fact that certain fundamental non-biological factors have changed. What are these factors that have changed? 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. As you can see, all countries are above the diagonal line of parity - it means that in all nations the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

It is interesting to note that while the female advantage is present everywhere, global differences are significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than men, while in Bhutan the difference is less than half an hour.

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In wealthy countries, the advantage of women in longevity used to be smaller
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below shows men and women's life expectancies at the birth in the US from 1790-2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both genders in America live longer than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be quite small however it increased dramatically over the last century.

Using the option 'Change country by country' in the chart, you will be able to confirm that the two points apply to the other countries with available data: علامات الحمل بولد - glorynote.com - Sweden, France and the UK.