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

Revision as of 22:20, 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 makes women live longer than men, and why has this advantage increased in the past? The evidence isn't conclusive and we only have incomplete answers. We know that behavioral, biological and صبغ الشعر بالاسود environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, but we don't know exactly how strong the relative contribution of each of these factors is.

In spite of the precise amount, we can say that a large portion of the reason why women live so much longer than men today but not previously, is to do with the fact that a number of fundamental non-biological factors have changed. These variables are evolving. 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 all countries are above the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl from every country could be expected to live for longer than her brothers.

Interestingly, this chart shows that, while the advantage for women exists everywhere, the cross-country differences are large. In Russia women have a longer life span than men; in Bhutan the gap is just half an hour.

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The advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was lower in countries with higher incomes that it is today.
We will now examine how the female advantage in life expectancy has changed over time. The next chart plots male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two aspects stand out.

There is an upward trend: Men as well as women in the US have a much longer life span 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 used to be tiny, it has increased substantially with time.

By selecting 'Change Country in the chart, determine if these two points are applicable to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and صبغ الشعر بالاسود the UK.