Men are catching up with women in life expectancy: what influenced this
The difference between the life expectancy of women and men has been shrinking all over the world. This has happened due to improved living and working conditions, but scientists suggest that the difference will not disappear completely, given the biological differences between the sexes.
The study was reported by New Scientist and published in the journal PLOS ONE.
Why did you start studying life expectancy?
Women generally live longer than men, sometimes even by decades, as in some regions of the world. This is influenced by a number of factors, including men being more likely to work in physically demanding and dangerous jobs, and being more prone to excessive alcohol consumption and other addictions. However, with improved health care, awareness of diseases such as AIDS, and reduced alcohol consumption and smoking, the gap may gradually decrease. And scientists at the University of California, San Francisco, have begun to investigate whether the shrinking gap between life expectancy for men and women is a global trend. To do this, they analyzed mortality in 194 countries between 1990 and 2010, dividing the countries into five groups according to life expectancy trends.
What do the numbers say about the erasure of differences?
The group of countries with the longest life expectancy consisted of wealthy countries, such as the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Japan. The group with the lowest life expectancy included only two countries – Rwanda and Uganda. However, the general pattern was a reduction in the difference in the age of death between men and women, although the difference was in the pace at which men were “catching up” with women.
In 1990, women in wealthy countries lived 4.84 years longer than men, and in 2010, only 4.77 years. While in Rwanda and Uganda in 1990, the difference was 10 years: men lived an average of 30.85 years, and women – 50.37 years. By 2010, men began to live significantly longer – by 14.37 years on average. This has reduced the gap between the sexes to 6.09 years, taking into account that women have started living longer by 0.94 years.
Despite the fact that the data is limited to 2010, the authors’ calculations indicate that the trend will continue at least until 2030. But at the same time, we shouldn’t dismiss biological differences, which may not equalize the difference in life expectancy between the sexes. In particular, the Y chromosome itself is associated with an increased risk of death, cardiovascular disease, and age-related disorders.
