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

Revision as of 01:52, 13 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 have a longer life span than men? What is the reason has this advantage gotten larger over time? There isn't much evidence and we're only able to provide incomplete answers. While we are aware that there are biological, behavioral and environmental factors which play a significant role in the longevity of women over men, صبغ الشعر بالاسود we don't know how much each factor contributes.

In spite of the amount of weight, we are aware that a large portion of the reason why women live longer than men do today but not previously, is to relate to the fact that several important non-biological aspects have changed. The factors changing are numerous. 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, 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. We can see that all countries are above the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl from every country could expect to live longer than her brothers.

This chart shows that, while there is a female advantage across all countries, differences between countries can be significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than men, صبغ الشعر بالاسود while in Bhutan the difference is less than half one year.

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In rich countries the longevity advantage for women was previously smaller.
We will now examine how the advantage of women in longevity has changed with time. The next chart compares male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two distinct points stand out.

There is an upward trend: Men as well as women in the US are living much, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is growing: Although the advantage of women in life expectancy used to be quite small however, it has grown significantly with time.

If you select the option "Change country from the chart, you can check that these two points are also applicable to the other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.