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

Revision as of 12:49, 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 is the reason women live much longer than men today, and why has this advantage increased over time? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to draw a definitive conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; however, we do not know how strong the relative contribution of each factor is.

We are aware that women live longer than men, regardless of their weight. However, this is not because of certain non-biological aspects have changed. These variables are evolving. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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, 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 - this means that in all countries baby girls can expect to live longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart above shows that although the female advantage is present everywhere, ابر التخسيس (use Glorynote) global differences are significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than men; in Bhutan the difference is just half an hour.

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The advantage of women in life expectancy was less in the richer countries that it is today.
Let's examine how the advantage of women in longevity has changed over time. The chart below shows men and women's life expectancies when they were born in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two areas stand out.

First, there's an upward trend. as well as women in the US live a lot, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is an increasing gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used be very small however it increased dramatically over the last century.

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