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

Revision as of 08:50, 12 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 women are more likely to live longer than men? And why does this benefit increase over time? There is only limited evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to support a definitive conclusion. While we are aware that there are biological, behavioral and environmental variables which all play a part in women living longer than men, we don't know what percentage each factor plays in.

In spite of the precise weight, we know that at least part of the reason why women live longer than men in the present and not previously, has to relate to the fact that a number of significant non-biological elements have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Other 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, افضل شامبو وبلسم 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, all countries are above the diagonal parity line , which means that in every country the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart illustrates that, although women have an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences can be significant. In Russia women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan the gap is only half a year.

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In the richer countries, the women's advantage in longevity was smaller
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below shows gender-based and female-specific life expectancy when they were born in the US in the years 1790 until 2014. Two aspects stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Men and women 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.

And افضل شامبو وبلسم, similar webpage, second, there is an increasing gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be quite small however, it has increased significantly during the last century.

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