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

Revision as of 02:59, 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. What makes women live more than men do today, and why have these advantages gotten bigger in the past? There isn't much evidence and we're left with only partial solutions. We are aware that behavioral, biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women have longer life spans than men, but we don't know exactly what the contribution of each one of these factors is.

Independently of the exact amount of weight, we are aware that at least a portion of the reason why women live so much longer than men today, but not in the past, has to be due to the fact that some significant non-biological elements have changed. These factors are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Certain are more complicated. 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 over the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl from every country could expect to live longer than her younger brother.

This chart shows that, even though women enjoy an advantage in all countries, the differences across countries can be significant. In Russia women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the difference is less than half a calendar year.

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The advantage for العاب زوجية women in life expectancy was smaller in countries with higher incomes that it is today.
Let's look at the way that female advantages in life expectancy has changed over time. The following chart shows the male and female lifespans at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two things stand العاب زوجية out.

First, there is an upward trend. Both genders living in America are living longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, there is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be extremely small however, it has increased significantly over the last century.

By selecting 'Change Country in the chart, you are able to check that these two points also apply to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.