Difference between revisions of "Why Women Are More Likely To Live Longer Than Men"

Revision as of 05:03, 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 have a longer life span than men? Why the advantage has grown as time passes? We only have a few clues and the evidence isn't sufficient to reach a definitive conclusion. While we are aware that there are behavioral, biological and environmental factors which all play a part in women's longevity more than men, we do not know the extent to which each factor plays a role.

We are aware that women are living longer than males, regardless of weight. However this is not because of certain non-biological aspects have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some are more complex. 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 diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl from every country could expect to live longer than her older brother.

The chart below shows that while there is a female advantage across all countries, differences between countries are often significant. In Russia women are 10 years older than men. In Bhutan the difference is less than half a year.

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In the richer countries, the longevity advantage for women was previously smaller.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below shows men and women's life expectancies at birth in the US during the period 1790 until 2014. Two specific points stand كيفية إقامة علاقة بالصور out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Women and men in America live longer than they used to 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is increasing: While the female advantage in life expectancy was once very small but it has risen significantly over time.

When you click on the option "Change country by country' in the chart, you are able to determine if these two points are also applicable to other countries that have available information: Sweden, France and the UK.