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

Revision as of 04:27, 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 reason why women are more likely to live longer than men? And افضل كريم للشعر how is this difference growing as time passes? We have only a small amount of evidence and the evidence is not strong enough to make an absolute conclusion. Although we know that there are biological, behavioral and environmental variables that all play a role in women's longevity more than men, we don't know what percentage each factor plays in.

We are aware that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. But it is not due to the fact that certain biological or non-biological factors have changed. These factors are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. There are other issues 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 every country is above the diagonal line of parity - this means in all countries a newborn girl can expect to live longer than a new boy.1

The chart below shows that even though women enjoy an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences are often significant. In Russia, women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan the difference is less than half a calendar year.

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The female advantage in life expectancy was smaller in developed countries than it is today.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The following chart shows the men and women's life expectancies at the time of birth in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two aspects stand out.

There is an upward trend. Men and women 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.

The second is that there is a widening gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be extremely small however it increased dramatically over the last century.

Using the option 'Change country in the chart, you will be able to verify that these two points also apply to the other countries having available data: Sweden, France and the UK.