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

Revision as of 12:45, 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. Why do women live much longer than men today and why have these advantages gotten bigger over time? The evidence isn't conclusive and we're left with only some solutions. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors all contribute to the fact that women are healthier than men; however, we do not know what the contribution of each of these factors is.

In spite of how much amount, we can say that at a minimum, the reason women live so much longer than men do today but not previously, has to relate to the fact that some key non-biological factors have changed. These are the factors that are changing. 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 all countries are over the line of parity diagonally. This means that a newborn girl in every country can anticipate to live longer than her brother.

Interestingly, this chart shows that while the female advantage exists everywhere, تحاميل مهبلية the cross-country differences are large. In Russia women are 10 years older than males; while in Bhutan the difference is less than half one year.

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The advantage women had in life expectancy was smaller in developed countries as compared to the present.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancy at birth in the US from 1790-2014. Two distinct features stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Women and men in America live longer than they used to a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be quite small however it increased dramatically over the course of the last century.

It is possible to verify that the points you've listed are applicable to other countries that have data by clicking on the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.