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

Revision as of 04:16, 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's the main reason women have a longer life span than men? And how has this advantage gotten larger in the past? The evidence isn't conclusive and we have only incomplete answers. Although we know that there are biological, behavioral as well as environmental factors which play a significant role in women's longevity more than males, we aren't sure how much each factor contributes.

In spite of how much amount, we can say that at least part of the reason why women live longer than men do today and not in the past, has to relate to the fact that certain 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, ابر التخسيس 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 ; it means that in all nations a newborn girl can expect to live for longer than a new boy.1

The chart above shows that although the female advantage is present everywhere, global differences are significant. In Russia women have an average of 10 years more than men, while in Bhutan the difference is just half an hour.

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The advantage of women in life expectancy was smaller in rich countries than it is today.
We will now examine how the female advantage in longevity has changed with time. The next chart compares the male and female lifespans when they were born in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two aspects stand out.

There is an upward trend. Men as well as women in the US live much, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, ابر التخسيس there's an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be very modest but it increased substantially during the last century.

If you select the option "Change country in the chart, you will be able to determine if these two points also apply to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.