Hacker News Reader

Comment by kolinko | Hacker News Reader

Wow, the disparity in male vs female incidence and mortality is astonishing - almost twice as many men as women get and die of cancer every year.

View on HN

I've read that bringing male mortality rates down to that of females would have about the same impact on mortality rates as curing cancer would.

I wonder if it's because men are much more likely to smoke and drink heavily...

Sweden has significant reduced the number of smokers, and it is the only country where more women then men smoke. Alcohol usage has also significant dropped, and the difference in usage between women and men is within a couple of percentiles: 32.1% (Women) vs 34.6% (Men).

The disparity in male vs female mortality is only slightly reduced. 3.3 years (Sweden) vs 4.5 years (USA). There was a sociology study from 2008 that even claimed that the disparity is artificial small in Sweden because women smoke more then men. They said that it should be much higher (in favor of women) if we removed smoking as a factor. In context smoking is also estimated to lower mortality by 14 years.

Probably also because unlike women..men will wait a long time to go to the doctor

More likely it's due to the fact that men are more likely to work in fields that force them into contact with carcinogens. Road workers, oil rig workers, construction workers, etc.

There's also the male suicide rate, which is a multiple of the female rate.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com