Why Do Women Live Longer Than Men

From ScenarioThinking
Revision as of 14:10, 12 November 2021 by IanSaunders4786 (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 reason why women live longer than men? And why does this benefit increase over time? We only have a few clues and the evidence is not sufficient to reach an absolute conclusion. We know there are behavioral, biological and environmental factors which all play a part in women who live longer than men, we don't know how much each one contributes.

In spite of the precise number of pounds, we know that at a minimum, the reason why women live so much longer than men today however not as previously, is to have to do with the fact that certain significant non-biological elements have changed. The factors changing are numerous. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others are more complicated. 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 افضل شامبو وبلسم 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, all countries are above the diagonal line of parity - which means that in every country the newborn girl is likely to live longer than a new boy.1

The chart below shows that although women have an advantage in all countries, the differences across countries could be significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men, while in Bhutan the difference is just half a year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
The female advantage in life expectancy was much lower in rich countries than it is today.
Let's look at how female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US from 1790 until 2014. Two distinct features stand out.

There is an upward trend. as well as women in the US live much, much longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The gap is getting wider: Although the advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was quite small It has significantly increased over time.

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, and Sweden.