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

Revision as of 15:03, 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 longer than men in the present, and why has this advantage increased over time? There is only limited evidence and the evidence is not strong enough to make an informed conclusion. We know there are biological, psychological and environmental factors that all play a role in women who live longer than males, we aren't sure how much each factor contributes.

In spite of the precise amount, we can say that at a minimum, the reason women live so much longer than men but not previously, has to relate to the fact that certain key non-biological factors 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 كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور men and women. As we can see, every country is above the diagonal line of parity - this means that in all countries baby girls can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

The chart below shows that although there is a women's advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries could be 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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The advantage women had in life expectancy was less in rich countries as compared to the present.
We will now examine the way that female advantages in longevity has changed with time. The next chart compares the male and female lifespans at birth in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two areas stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Both genders living in America are living longer than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور there is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in life expectancy used be extremely small but it increased substantially during the last century.

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