Why Are Women Living Longer Than Men

From ScenarioThinking
Revision as of 01:12, 1 December 2021 by NigelPedley1424 (talk | contribs)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

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 makes women live longer than men in the present and why have these advantages gotten bigger in the past? There is only limited evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to support an informed conclusion. While we are aware that there are behavioral, biological as well as environmental factors which all play a part in women who live longer than men, we don't know the extent to which each factor plays a role.

We know that women live longer than males, regardless of weight. However this isn't due to the fact that certain biological factors have changed. The factors changing are numerous. 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 every country is above the diagonal parity line ; it means that in all nations that a baby girl can be expected to live longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart shows that, while there is a female advantage across all countries, differences between countries can be significant. In Russia, women live 10 years more than men. In Bhutan the gap is only half a year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
The female advantage in terms of life expectancy was lower in developed countries as compared to the present.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart compares the male and female lifespans at birth in the US from 1790 to 2014. Two points stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Both men and ماذا يحدث بين الزوجين في الحمام بالصور (https://glorynote.com/%D9%85%D8%A7%D8%B0%D8%A7-%D9%8A%D8%AD%D8%AF%D8%AB-%D8%A8%D9%8A%D9%86-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B2%D9%88%D8%AC%D9%8A%D9%86-%D9%81%D9%8A-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AD%D9%85%D8%A7%D9%85) women in the US are living much, much longer today than a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, there is an increase in the gap between men and women: female advantage in life expectancy used be extremely small however, it has increased significantly over the last century.

If you select the option "Change country by country' in the chart, determine if these two points are applicable to the other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.