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

Revision as of 17:20, 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 main reason women are more likely to live longer than men? And how is this difference growing in the past? There is only limited evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to reach an unambiguous conclusion. We know there are behavioral, biological, and environmental factors that all play a role in women who live longer than males, we aren't sure what percentage each factor plays in.

In spite of the precise weight, we know that a large portion of the reason why women live longer than men do today but not previously, has to relate to the fact that some fundamental non-biological factors have changed. These factors are changing. 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 ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور men and women. As we can see, every country is above the diagonal line of parity - this means in all countries that a baby girl can be expected to live for longer than a new boy.1

This graph shows that although there is a women's advantage across all countries, differences between countries are often significant. In Russia, women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the gap is just half a year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
The advantage women had in life expectancy was less in rich countries that it is today.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart compares male and female life expectancy at birth in the US between 1790 and 2014. Two things stand out.

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

The gap is getting wider: Although the advantage of women in life expectancy used to be extremely small It has significantly increased over time.

When you click on the option "Change country from the chart, you can determine if these two points apply to the other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.