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

Revision as of 02:27, 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. Why do women live longer than men in the present, and why has this advantage increased in the past? The evidence is sketchy and we have only incomplete solutions. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, تحاميل مهبلية However, we're not sure how significant the impact to each of these variables is.

In spite of the amount, we can say that at a minimum, the reason women live so much longer than men today however not as previously, has to do with the fact that some important non-biological aspects have changed. What are the factors that are changing? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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. It is clear that every country is above the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl in every country can be expected to live for longer than her older brother.

It is interesting to note that, while the advantage for women exists in all countries, difference between countries is huge. In Russia, women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the difference is less than half a calendar year.

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The advantage for women in terms of life expectancy was lower in rich countries than it is today.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart plots the male and female lifespans when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two specific points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Women and men in America have longer lives than they were a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, there's an increasing gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be extremely small however it increased dramatically during the last century.

Using the option 'Change country by country' in the chart, you are able to check that these two points are also applicable to the other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.