Why Do Women Live Longer Than Men

From ScenarioThinking
Revision as of 00:31, 10 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. Why do women live much longer than men today, and why does this benefit increase over time? We only have a few clues and the evidence isn't strong enough to make a definitive conclusion. We know there are behavioral, biological and environmental variables which play a significant role in the longevity of women over males, it isn't clear what percentage each factor plays in.

In spite of the number of pounds, we know that at a minimum, the reason women live so much longer than men today but not previously, has to be due to the fact that a number of fundamental non-biological factors have changed. These are the factors that 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. We can see that all countries are above the diagonal line of parity. This means that a newborn girl from any country can expect to live longer than her older brother.

The chart above shows that although the female advantage exists in all countries, difference between countries is huge. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men, while in Bhutan the gap is less than half an hour.

__S.17__
__S.19__
In countries with high incomes, كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام the longevity advantage for كيفية ممارسة العلاقة الزوجية فى الاسلام women used to be smaller
Let's take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The next chart plots the life expectancy of males and females at birth in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two distinct features stand out.

The first is that there is an upward trend. Women and men in America have longer lives 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 getting wider: Although the advantage of women in life expectancy used to be extremely small It has significantly increased with time.

You can check if these are applicable to other countries that have data by selecting the "Change country" option in the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.