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

Revision as of 17:44, 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 is the reason women live longer than men? And how has this advantage gotten larger as time passes? We only have partial evidence and the evidence is not strong enough to make an unambiguous conclusion. We know that biological, افضل كريم للشعر behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; However, we're not sure how strong the relative contribution of each factor is.

Independently of the exact amount, افضل كريم للشعر we can say that a large portion of the reason why women live longer than men however not as in the past, is to have to do with the fact that a number of significant non-biological elements have changed. What are the factors that are changing? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are others that are more intricate. 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 line of parity. This means that a newborn girl from every country could be expected to live for longer than her older brother.

It is interesting to note that, while the advantage for women exists across all countries, the global differences are significant. In Russia, women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the difference is less than half a calendar year.

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In the richer countries, the longevity advantage for women was previously smaller.
Let's now look at how the female advantage in longevity has changed with time. The chart below illustrates the gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at birth in the US during the period 1790 until 2014. Two aspects stand out.

First, there's an upward trend. Both men as well as women in the US are living much, much longer than they did 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 life expectancy used be very small however, it has increased significantly in the past century.

You can verify that the points you've listed are applicable to other countries that have data by selecting the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.