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

Revision as of 02:37, 14 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 much longer than men today, and why have these advantages gotten bigger in the past? We only have partial evidence and تحاميل مهبلية the evidence is not sufficient to reach an absolute conclusion. Although we know that there are behavioral, biological and environmental variables that play an integral role in women's longevity more than men, we do not know what percentage each factor plays in.

In spite of how much weight, we know that at a minimum, the reason why women live longer than men however not as previously, has to do with the fact that a number of significant non-biological elements have changed. What are these new 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. As we can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line ; which means that in every country that a baby girl can be expected to live longer than a new boy.1

This chart illustrates that, although women have an advantage across all countries, differences between countries can be substantial. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men, while in Bhutan the gap is less than half each year.

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The female advantage in terms of life expectancy was lower in rich countries than it is today.
Let's look at how the gender advantage in terms of longevity has changed over time. The chart below shows gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at the time of birth in the US in the years 1790 until 2014. Two things stand out.

There is an upward trend. Men and women living in America are living longer than they used to 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is a widening gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used be very modest however, it has increased significantly during the last century.

You can check if these principles are also applicable to other countries that have data by clicking on the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, تحاميل مهبلية France, and Sweden.