Difference between revisions of "Why Do Women Have Longer Lives Than Men"

Revision as of 16:27, 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 so much longer than men today and how does this benefit increase over time? There isn't much evidence and العاب زوجية we're left with only limited answers. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women live longer than men; but we don't know exactly what the contribution of each factor is.

In spite of how much number of pounds, we know that a large portion of the reason women live longer than men in the present, but not previously, has to be due to the fact that some important non-biological aspects 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. We can see that every country is above the diagonal line of parity. This implies that a baby girl from any country can expect to live longer than her brothers.

This chart illustrates that, although women have an advantage in all countries, the differences across countries could be significant. In Russia, women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan there is a difference of only half a year.

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In wealthy countries, the female advantage in longevity was smaller
Let's look at the way that female advantages in longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows the life expectancy of males and العاب زوجية females when they were born in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two points stand out.

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

The second is that there is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in life expectancy used to be extremely small however it increased dramatically over the last century.

You can check if the points you've listed are applicable to other countries that have data by clicking the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.