Why Do Women Live Longer Than Men

From ScenarioThinking
Revision as of 06:01, 8 November 2021 by BFXLuciana (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's the main reason women are more likely to live longer than men? What is the reason the advantage has grown in the past? We only have partial evidence and the evidence isn't sufficient to support an unambiguous conclusion. We recognize that biological, behavioral and environmental factors contribute to the fact that women have longer lives than men, However, we're not sure how strong the relative contribution to each of these variables is.

In spite of how much amount of weight, we are aware that at least a portion of the reason women live longer than men however not as in the past, has to be due to the fact that some fundamental non-biological factors have changed. These factors are changing. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others 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 we can see, every country is above the diagonal line of parity - it means that in all nations the newborn girl is likely to live for longer than a new boy.1

The chart above shows that while the female advantage is present everywhere, country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women live 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan there is a difference of less than half a calendar year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
The female advantage in terms of life expectancy was lower in countries with higher incomes than it is today.
Let's examine the way that female advantages in life expectancy has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancies at the birth in the US between 1790 to 2014. Two points stand اضيق وضعية للجماع out.

First, there is an upward trend. Women and men in the United States live longer than they used to a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is getting wider: Although the advantage of women in life expectancy was once extremely small but it has risen significantly in the past.

By selecting 'Change Country in the chart, you will be able to verify that these two points are also applicable to the other countries having available data: Sweden, France and the UK.