Why Do Women Live Longer Than Men

Fra Enneawiki
Spring til navigation Spring til søgning

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 and why has this advantage increased over time? The evidence isn't conclusive and we're left with only partial answers. While we are aware that there are biological, behavioral as well as environmental factors which play a significant role in women's longevity more than males, it isn't clear how much each factor contributes.

In spite of how much amount of weight, we are aware that at least part of the reason women live so much longer than men but not in the past, is to have to do with the fact that certain fundamental non-biological factors have changed. What 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, ابر التخسيس 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. It is clear that every country is over the line of parity diagonally. This implies that a baby girl in every country can expect to live longer than her brothers.

The chart below shows that although there is a women's advantage everywhere, cross-country differences could be significant. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men; in Bhutan the gap is less than half a year.

__S.17__
__S.19__
The female advantage in life expectancy was less in countries with higher incomes than it is now.
We will now examine how the gender advantage in longevity has changed over time. The following chart shows the male and female lifespans when they were born in the US over the period 1790-2014. Two areas stand out.

First, ابر التخسيس there is an upward trend. Both genders living in America are living longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

There is a widening gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used to be quite small, but it grew substantially over the last century.

Using the option 'Change country from the chart, verify that these two points are also applicable to other countries that have available information: Sweden, France and the UK.