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

Revision as of 16:45, 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 does this benefit increase over time? We only have a few clues and the evidence is not sufficient to reach a definitive conclusion. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, however, we aren't sure how strong the relative contribution of each of these factors is.

In spite of the precise number of pounds, we know that at least part of the reason women live so much longer than men do today, but not in the past, is to relate to the fact that certain fundamental non-biological factors have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some 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 - which means that in every country the newborn girl is likely to live longer than a new boy.1

The chart above shows that, ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور while the advantage for women exists everywhere, the global differences are significant. In Russia, women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan, the difference is less than half a calendar year.

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In wealthy countries, the longevity advantage for women was previously smaller.
Let's take a look at how the 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 over the period 1790-2014. Two points stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Men and women living in America are living longer than they used to a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very small however it increased dramatically during the last century.

When you click on the option "Change country from the chart, you are able to verify that these two points are also applicable to other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.