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

Revision as of 03:07, 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 why women live longer than men? What is the reason has this advantage gotten larger in the past? The evidence isn't conclusive and we're left with only partial solutions. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women are healthier than men; however, we aren't sure how much the influence to each of these variables is.

Independently of the exact number of pounds, we know that at least a portion of the reason women live so much longer than men, but not previously, is to be due to the fact that several fundamental non-biological factors have changed. What are these new factors? 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 all countries are over the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl from every country could expect to live longer than her younger brother.

This chart illustrates that, while there is a female advantage in all countries, the differences across 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 of women in terms of life expectancy was lower in rich countries than it is now.
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The following chart shows the male and female lifespans when they were born in the US during the time period between 1790 and 2014. Two points stand العاب زوجية out.

First, there's an upward trend. Men as well as women in the US live a lot, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, there is an increasing gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be quite small however it increased dramatically during the last century.

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