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

Revision as of 01:23, 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 so longer than men in the present and why has this advantage increased in the past? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to draw an absolute conclusion. We know there are biological, behavioral and environmental factors which play a significant role in women living longer than males, we aren't sure the extent to which each factor ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور plays a role.

In spite of how much weight, we know that a large portion of the reason women live so much longer than men and not in the past, has to do with the fact that several important non-biological aspects have changed. These are the factors that are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Other 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 above the diagonal parity line , this means in all countries that a baby girl can be expected to live longer than a new boy.1

This graph shows that although there is a women's advantage in all countries, the differences across countries can be significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men, while in Bhutan the difference is less than half one year.

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The advantage for women in life expectancy was much lower in developed countries than it is now.
Let's now look at how the female advantage in longevity has changed with time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancy at the time of birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two distinct 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.

Second, there's an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be extremely small but it increased substantially over the course of the last century.

If you select the option "Change country in the chart, determine if these two points are also applicable to other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.