Why are women living longer than men?
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 is the reason women have a longer life span than men? And why the advantage has grown over time? We only have partial evidence and the evidence isn’t sufficient to reach an unambiguous conclusion. We know that behavioral, biological and environmental factors play a role in the fact that women live longer than men; however, we aren’t sure how much the influence of each of these factors is.
We are aware that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. However it is not because of 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. 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. As you can see, every country is above the diagonal parity line ; this means that in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live longer than a newborn boy.1
The chart below shows that while there is a female advantage throughout the world, the differences between countries could be significant. In Russia women have a longer life span than men, while in Bhutan the difference is just half a year.
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The advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was lower in developed countries as compared to the present.
Let’s examine how the advantage of women in terms of longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancies at the birth in the US during the period 1790-2014. Two distinct points stand out.
First, there is an upward trend: Men as well as women in the US have a much longer life span longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.
Second, the gap is increasing: While the advantage of women in life expectancy was once extremely small, it has increased substantially in the past.
You can verify that these principles are also applicable to other countries with data by clicking on the “Change country” option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, ابر التخسيس and Sweden.
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Randolph Buzzard created the group
Why are women living longer than men? 2 years, 7 months ago
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