Women Live Longer

It is widely dispersed knowledge that women (at least in the Western world) live longer than men, on average. This has been a fact for quite a while, probably from the middle of the eighteenth century. The reasons behind this discrepancy, however, are not that clear.

Reasons that have been proposed, are purely biological differences, or the female tendency to consult a physician more rapid than their male counterparts, thereby increasing the odds of an early detection of several conditions.

The difference in life expectancy between men and women, however, is so large and obvious, that many scientists agreed there had to be more to it.

Examining Cause of Death

To try and figure this out, researchers set out to study mortality data of both men and women in thirty European countries. If all causes of death were included in the analysis, it appeared that more men had died than women.

But the difference between the sexes was not equal across countries. In Iceland, for example, for every 100,000 deaths, only 188 more men than women died. This greatly contrasts with Ukraine, where, for every 100,000 deaths, 942 more men died. In most of the researched countries the difference between male and female deaths was found to be around 400 extra deaths of men for every 100,000 deaths.

What Causes the Difference?

After these findings, the researchers investigated the relative contributions of different causes of death to this discrepancy between men and women. It turned out that there were two factors that contributed greatly to the earlier average age of death in men:

• Smoking was the most important contributor to the difference, with an average contribution of 40 to 60% (with the highest contribution being 74%, in Malta).
• Alcohol was the second serious contributor, averagely being responsible for 20 to 30% of the difference.

So, these results show that 60 to 90% (on average) of the difference in life expectancy between men and women can be explained by smoking and drinking. The lesson for men seems obvious, try to cut down on the smoking and drinking.

References

• BBC News Health (18 January 2011, by Michelle Roberts). Smoking linked to earlier male deaths.
• McCartney, G.; Mahmood, L.; Leyland, A.H.; Batty, G.D. & Hunt, K. (2011). Contribution of smoking-related and alcohol-related deaths to the gender gap in mortality: evidence from 30 European countries. Tobacco Control. 20, pp. 166 – 168.
• Medical Research Council, Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, News (18 January 2011). Smoking accounts for up to 60 percent of gender gap in deaths across Europe.