Why are women living longer than men?
公開日:2022/01/23 / 最終更新日:2022/01/23
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 is the reason women have a longer life span than men? And why does this benefit increase as time passes? We only have partial evidence and the evidence isn’t strong enough to make an unambiguous conclusion. Although we know that there are biological, behavioral and environmental factors that all play a role in the longevity of women over males, we aren’t sure how much each factor contributes.
In spite of the precise amount of weight, we are aware that at least part of the reason why women live longer than men do today, but not in the past, has to relate to the fact that some significant non-biological elements have changed. What are the factors that are changing? 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. As we can see, every country is above the diagonal line of parity – this means that in all countries the newborn girl is likely to live longer than a new boy.1
This chart is interesting in that it shows that while the female advantage exists everywhere, the country-specific differences are huge. In Russia women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the gap is only half a year.
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In the richer countries, the female advantage in longevity was previously smaller.
Let’s take a look at how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below illustrates the men and women’s life expectancies at the birth in the US between 1790 until 2014. Two distinct points stand out.
The first is that there is an upward trend: Conference.portonvictor.org/wiki/Why_Do_Women_Live_Longer_Than_Men (just click the following page) Men as well as 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.
Second, the gap is growing: Although the advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was tiny however, it has grown significantly over time.
When you click on the option “Change country in the chart, you are able to confirm that the two points apply to other countries with available data: Sweden, France and the UK.
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