Difference between revisions of "Why Are Women Living Longer Than Men"

Revision as of 12:39, 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. Why do women live much longer than men today, and why have these advantages gotten bigger in the past? The evidence isn't conclusive and we're left with only limited solutions. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; however, we do not know how significant the impact of each of these factors is.

In spite of the precise amount of weight, we are aware that at least part of the reason women live longer than men do today but not in the past, is to do with the fact that several fundamental non-biological factors have changed. These are the factors that are changing. 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 we can see, every country is 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

The chart above shows that while the female advantage is present everywhere, cross-country differences are large. In Russia women are 10 years older than men; in Bhutan the gap is just half an hour.

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The advantage of women in life expectancy was less in rich countries than it is today.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below shows gender-based and female-specific life expectancy when they were born in the US from 1790 until 2014. Two distinct features stand out.

First, كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام there is an upward trend. Women and men in America live longer than they were 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's a widening gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used be very small however it increased dramatically during the last century.

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