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

Revision as of 03:17, 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 much longer than men today, and why is this difference growing in the past? We only have partial evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to support a definitive conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; However, we're not sure what the contribution of each one of these factors is.

Independently of the exact number of pounds, we know that at least part of the reason why women live so much longer than men in the present and not in the past, has to do with the fact that several significant non-biological elements have changed. The factors changing are numerous. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are other issues that are more intricate. 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 علامات الحمل بولد 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 in all countries can be expected to live for longer than her brother.

This graph shows that although there is a women's advantage in all countries, the differences across countries can be substantial. In Russia, women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the difference is less that half a year.

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The advantage women had in terms of life expectancy was lower in the richer countries than it is now.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart shows male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Women and men in America have longer lives than they did 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 life expectancy used to be extremely small however, it has increased significantly over the course of the last century.

When you click on the option "Change country by country' in the chart, you can determine if these two points are also applicable to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.