Why do women live longer than men?
ourworldindata.org
ourworldindata.org
> yet paradoxically, while women have lower mortality rates throughout their life, they also often have higher rates of physical illness, more disability days, more doctor visits, and hospital stays than men do. It seems women do not live longer than men only because they age more slowly, but also because they are more robust when they get sick at any age.
Alternative hypotheses might be that either (for sociological or even physical reasons) that women are more aware when they're unwell so seek help more quickly and/or thoroughly; or that men are equally aware when they're unwell, but are less disposed to seek help?
> A large majority of occupational deaths occur among men. In one U.S. study, 93% of deaths on the job involved men,[4] with a death rate approximately 11 times higher than women. The industries with the highest death rates are mining, agriculture, forestry, fishing, and construction, all of which employ more men than women.[5] Deaths of members in the military is currently above 90% men.[6]
Of course it is not the only or the most important variable here. Do you expect to find one thing that answers for the whole gap? I'm sure you'll say no, but then why do you disregard proven, factual variables that may add up?
I think most people downvote this because it is associated with men's rights movement and other groups.
Because I think the Pareto principle applies here as well. It's not lots of smaller "variables that add up", it's one or two variables that make up for 80% of the difference.
I doubt it’s relevant. In 2011, there were ~5k fatal work injuries, i.e. 0.2% of the 2,5M deaths in the US that year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_fatality#/media/F...
https://www.infoplease.com/us/mortality/deaths-united-states...
Update: I’m not saying your job has no effect on your lifespan. It does, but mostly because of the (lack of) money you get from it rather than its dangerosity. Job-related deaths are probably too low to be the cause of the men/women lifespan difference.
Workplace injuries and stress don't kill you, but they make you die faster.
This is a stupid made-up story, I know, but my point is that there are so many ways our jobs affect our health. Men do dangerous work, it doesn't have to kill us immediately, but it does take us early.
That said, I can't find any evidence on why I would think that. I'm guessing I'm just going off what we know about dogs, where larger ones don't live as long as smaller ones. And even that is probably much more nuanced than I'm allowing in that short sentence.
Though, for my question, the breed is less important than the size. Was it on the larger size?
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...
Do women tend to get older than men? Yes they do, and talking about non-age related causes of death, such as the article does, just confuses the issue. Such a question should ignore non-aging causes of death that skew the statistics such as death in childbirth and infant mortality in earlier eras.
Women often complain that men lose weight easier than they do, and that men don't get cold as easy as women. Both of these point to generally faster metabolisms for men, which I would think would cause men to "burn out" their bodies earlier.
Yes.
We have data that proves that, you can compare the ranges where people are older:
http://www.censusscope.org/us/chart_age.html
> and if so, why?
The OP article is exactly about that too. And they link to the scientific work, already 12 years old:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S155085790...
The key statements from its abstract:
"For virtually all the primary causes of death and at virtually all ages, mortality rates are higher for men. Women do not live longer than men because they age more slowly, but because they are more robust at every age."
There are also more healthcare opportunities for women compared to men so I suspect that also plays a part and then there is also the fact that women tend to live less stressful lives than men (choice of occupation) which is probably the biggest contributor to ones own life expectancy.
Men have lower typical body fat than women, so you are starting from a wrong assumption.
At the very least, this is pretty well supported at the upper end of lifespans.
Looking at the list of oldest people recorded in modern times[1], the list is predominantly female. There is only one man in the top 20 positions (Jiroemon Kimura at number 16), and only 3 in the top 40.
Whether this is due to the same cause as the overall trend, I can't say. Looking at the CDC life expectancy tables for ages 65 and 75, however, we still see a gap of several years between male and female life expectancy, so whatever is causing the divergence probably isn't related to youth and early-mid adult mortality.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_people#Ten_oldest_verif...
Add this to violence, murder rates, great hesitance to go to the doctor by men, higher prison population where you cannot live healthy etc. and you have the explanation ready, no need to look for a biological reason.
Plus, comparing to the other animals doesn't have great significance. Male animals are more aggressive, have to fight for mating and die.
We know that related constructs vary more across cultures (ie - that present variance in the levels of social integration) than between the genders, which suggests that the chief causes of the difference here are more social than biological.
I wonder how much is this due to the fact that women are more ill or the fact that men don't go to the doctor even if they have to.
”A recent study published in the journal Current Biology finds that Korean eunuchs — castrated men — lived 14 to 19 years longer than other men,
[…]
The authors think the men’s long lives can’t be chalked up solely to a privileged lifestyle“
That is, this would easily explain why women have had a better increase in their expected life span. It would not seem to give any reason for them to have a longer one.
Workplace stress and less than optimal coping strategies will cause interesting rebalancing. It may well be that in 20-30 years women’s life expectancy will decrease.
Here is a data question, how does the average life span change if you remove suicide as a factor for both women and men? All the other factors that the article hints to like hormones, biology, smoking habits, animal studying, and so on are interesting but unless one address the most common cause of early death then this seem a bit dishonest.
It also seems odd of the article to not acknowledge attributes that is correlated with long life span. A large social network, having people around you at old age, good mental health and stress treatments. Those all have sex difference in outcomes and are highly connected to life spans, but completely missing from the article.
also women are more responsible regarding their health and prevention than men
93% of occupational deaths are men. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_fatality
60% of homeless are male. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_S...