subject: Do women live longer than men? [print this page] Do women live longer than men? Do women live longer than men?
Do women live longer than men?
In general women indeed live longer than men in most countries of the world. In the UK, life expectancy, at birth, is 74 for men, whereas it is 81 for women, a difference of seven years. The figures for other developed countries are broadly similar. In a few countries, like Bangladesh for instance, men live slightly longer than women (with a life expectancy of 57 and 56 respectively), but such places are now the exception. The reason women have shorter lives in countries like Bangladesh is due to the lack of investment in women's health and particularly in maternal health.
There are two answers to the puzzle as to why women last the distance better than men do. Lifestyle plays a very important role in our life expectancy, and men often make unhealthy choices. Men are more likely than women to smoke, with the result that more die before their time of lung cancer, other smoking-related cancers, and heart disease. Excessive intake of alcohol is a factor in men's premature deaths in some societies, while in many industrialized countries deaths from occupational causes inflict a greater toll on men than on women. It may also be true that women are physically more active throughout life; women do more of the 'physiotherapy of daily living', such as getting the shopping in and doing the housework, and exercise protects against many age-related conditions.
But there are also biological answers. There is growing evidence that women are biologically tougher than men. For example, we now know that female hormones protect women from heart disease, at least until the menopause. The reasons for women's biological resilience have to do with the way we have all evolved to play our reproductive roles. Put simply, we have evolved to reproduce and pass our genes on to future generations. Our genes stand a better chance of survival if the nurturing parent - the mother - survives to care for her offspring until they are able to fend for themselves. In biological terms, men are expendable at younger ages because their genetic investment does not depend on their personal survival.
