Difference between revisions of "Why Do Women Have Longer Lives Than Men"

Revision as of 17:03, 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 longer than men and why is this difference growing over time? The evidence isn't conclusive and we're left with only limited answers. We know there are biological, behavioral and environmental factors that play an integral role in the longevity of women over men, we do not know how much each one contributes.

In spite of how much amount of weight, we are aware that at a minimum, the reason women live longer than men, but not in the past, has to relate to the fact that a number of important non-biological aspects have changed. These are the factors that are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Other are more complicated. For example, كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام 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 we can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line - this means that in all countries baby girls can expect to live for longer than a new boy.1

This graph shows that while there is a female advantage in all countries, the differences across countries could be significant. In Russia women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan, the difference is just half a year.

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The advantage women had in terms of life expectancy was lower in the richer countries that it is today.
We will now examine how the female advantage in longevity has changed with time. The next chart plots male and female life expectancy at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two things stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both genders living in America are living longer than they used to 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 extremely small however, it has increased significantly in the past century.

It is possible to verify that these are applicable to other countries with data by clicking the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.