Why do women live longer than men?
公開日:2022/03/05 / 最終更新日:2022/03/05
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 live much longer than men today and why is this difference growing in the past? We only have a few clues and the evidence isn’t strong enough to make a definitive conclusion. While we are aware that there are behavioral, biological as well as environmental factors which play a significant role in women’s longevity more than males, we aren’t sure how much each factor contributes.
We know that women are living longer than men, regardless of weight. However this is not due to the fact that certain non-biological aspects have changed. What are these new factors? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Certain 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 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 parity line , it means that in all nations that a baby girl can be expected to live for longer than a new boy.1
This graph shows that although women have an advantage everywhere, cross-country differences are often significant. In Russia, women live 10 years more than males. In Bhutan the difference is just half a year.
__S.17__
__S.19__
In wealthy countries, the female advantage in longevity was smaller
Let’s now look at how the advantage of women in longevity has changed over time. The chart below shows gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at birth in the US from 1790-2014. Two distinct points stand out.
First, Zoomwiki.blitwise.com/index.php/Why_Are_Women_Living_Longer_Than_Men (4finegolf.com) there’s an upward trend. as well as women in the US live a lot, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.
And second, there is a widening gap: The female advantage in terms of life expectancy used be quite small, but it grew substantially over the course of the last century.
If you select the option “Change country’ on the chart, you will be able to check that these two points are applicable to other countries with available information: Sweden, France and the UK.
「Uncategorized」カテゴリーの関連記事