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

Revision as of 19:43, 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 more than men do today, and why does this benefit increase over time? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to draw an absolute conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we aren't sure how strong the relative contribution of each of these factors is.

We have learned that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. But this is not due to the fact that certain biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are other issues 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, ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور so advances in medicine that reduced the long-term health burden from infectious diseases, especially for ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور 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. It is clear that all countries are over the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl from any country can be expected to live for longer than her older brother.

This chart is interesting in that it shows that while the female advantage is present everywhere, difference between countries is huge. In Russia women are 10 years older than males; while in Bhutan the gap is less than half a year.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was much lower in developed countries than it is now.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the male and female lifespans at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two aspects stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Women and men in America have longer lives than they used to 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is increasing: While the female advantage in terms of life expectancy was tiny It has significantly increased in the past.

You can verify that these principles are also applicable to other countries with data by selecting the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.