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

Revision as of 18:15, 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 why the advantage has grown in the past? There is only limited evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to support an unambiguous conclusion. We know that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer life spans than men, however, we do not know how significant the impact of each one of these factors is.

In spite of how much number of pounds, we know that a large portion of the reason women live so much longer than men in the present but not in the past, is to do with 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. There are others 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 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 parity line ; this means in all countries baby girls can expect to live for كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور longer than a newborn boy.1

The chart above shows that, while the advantage for women exists across all countries, كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور the country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men. In Bhutan the gap is only half a year.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was smaller in developed countries than it is now.
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The next chart compares the male and female lifespans at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

There is an upward trend. Both genders in America live longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is increasing: While the female advantage in life expectancy was very small but it has risen significantly over time.

You can confirm that these are applicable to other countries with data by clicking on the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.