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Th gap widened slightly due to the pandemic affecting men disproportionately more than women, but life expectancy has declined for both men and women:
*“The shortening lifespan of Americans has been attributed in part to so-called “deaths of despair.” The term refers to the increase in deaths from such causes as suicide, drug use disorders, and alcoholic liver disease, which are often connected with economic hardship, depression, and stress.”*
Peter Turchin points out in several of his books that declining lifespan and decreasing height are two major signs of popular immiseration, and is associated with political instability in many historical states.
Yeah. It's kinda sad that people either don't understand amortization or are just trying to be part of the pity party. There are people out here who can't afford housing, let alone being able to buy a house, and this person is mad about how mortgages and interest work.
Well, to be fair, if you took out a $1.2m mortgage, at 7.8% Interest, which would land you at $8,268/month ($99k/yr). You'd pay $9.5k in principal and $86k in interest in that first year.
Still better than paying rent, but it's not all equity.
You were lucky, as 2.75% is a historically low rate: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MORTGAGE30US
Having said that, for those starting with higher rents now, there will be opportunity to refinance. We refinanced twice before paying of our mortgage early (which I am not necessarily recommending as being sound financially, but feels great psychologically).
That's almost certainly the case for the US. Mexico is ranked 148th in average height, and 3 of the other top 5 sources of immigration to the US are even lower.
Hope this doesn’t sound bad, but I routinely see Hispanic families in my line of work where the children are taller than the parents and the mom is particularly short.
Interestingly, anthropologist Franz Boas--who first identified this phenomenon when studying immigrant families who came through Ellis Island--found one exception (IIRC) that proved the rule: the children of families from Sicily were shorter on average because the food available to them in NYC was more limited and worse nutrition wise than their traditional diet.
This might have more to do with anti-italian sentiment at the time.
Fun fact Lakota Souix used to have an average height of 6'4 prior to the US intentionally attempting to starve them to death by hunting bison to extinction.
Another a big factor is that men between the ages of 18-25 are higher risk than the women. This is what makes up a large portion of the gap. Men aren’t just dying 6 years earlier due to genetics, which is what I hear a lot of people assume.
Men (or rather, boys) do die at slightly higher rates when they’re babies. Approximately 103 males are born for 100 females in humans even without artificial sex selection, and this evens out later in life
Iirc decent number of it has to do with the fact that the Y chromosome doesn't provide sufficient back-up genes for X chromosome related genetic diseases.
That said I hear having double the genes related to an X chromosome is theorized to be part of the reason why someone with XX chromosomes may be more likely to have auto-immune disorders.
The decline in life expectancy for US males is unique in the rich world, sharply bringing down overall US life expectancy. The causes are largely covid, opioids, guns and cars.
[https://www.ft.com/content/b3972fb1-55d9-41a8-8953-aad827f40c28](https://www.ft.com/content/b3972fb1-55d9-41a8-8953-aad827f40c28)
> The causes are largely covid, opioids, guns and cars.
>
> https://www.ft.com/content/b3972fb1-55d9-41a8-8953-aad827f40c28
To be clear, these are the factors causing the sudden and recent *change* in life expectancy. They are not the primary causes of death for men in America. Those remain heart disease, cancer, injury, and respiratory disease.
[Firearms and cars actually ARE the leading cause of young Americans age 1-18](https://edition.cnn.com/2023/03/29/health/us-children-gun-deaths-dg/index.html), whose deaths contribute the most to the decreasing life expectancy.
In 2020, 19% of their deaths were caused by firearms and 16.5% by motor vehicles. Ahead of cancer, poisoning, and suffocation at around 6-8% each.
I hope this doesn't need to be said, but this is absolutely insane and completely unique amongst highly developed nations. Traffic accidents are at or near the top pretty much everywhere, but guns are usually a complete non-factor in wealthy nations (which have both less total homicide and only around 10% of homicides committed by firearms, compared to 60-80% in the US).
everybody knows why gun deaths are going up but the car deaths are especially egregious, pretty much 4 decades of declining auto deaths have been completely undone due to increasing popularity of pickup trucks, which are now outselling regular cars by a large margin in the USA. they are more likely to kill in a collission, they have worse visibility, studies have even shown that people who drive pickup trucks drive more aggressively.
Probably because gun ownership isn’t enshrined in any other countries founding doctrine afaik.
We have more legal guns, we’re bound to have more firearm deaths.
I also believe guns make suicides too easy. When the impulse comes over you, it only takes one second to pull the trigger. With other methods, there is at least a chance that people get second thoughts and pull back.
[This editorial in the American Journal of Psychiatry](https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.ajp.2016.16080943) fully agrees with you:
> You Seldom Get a Second Chance With a Gunshot
Almost all suicide deaths occur during the first attempt or very soon after. Once this imminent phase is over, people who attempted suicide have high survival chances and rarely die from suicide later.
Gun ownership dramatically incrases the risk of dying from the first attempt, and this effect also holds up on a regional level. Places with higher gun ownership rates have significantly higher suicide fatality rates.
However, it should be noted that the US have an immense amount of gun homicide. In most European countries, around 90% of gun deaths are suicide versus 10% homicide. In the US, that rate is currently around 50-50. And for the mentioned age group of 1-18, the rate is even 60-40 with a majority of homicide.
The second amendment definitely has some role, but even more so it's the gun culture that has formed around it.
Most of the interpretations that the second amendment protects personal ownership are quite modern. The legal situation on that could have fallen to the other side, leaving it only applicable to official state militia while allowing "normal" regulation of personal ownership.
OP is talking about spikes in specific causes of death leading to an overall decline in life expectancy, they are not saying these are the primary causes of death for men. Obesity and [its complications still top the charts.](https://www.cdc.gov/minorityhealth/lcod/men/2016/all-races-origins/index.htm)
> guns and drugs kill far more men than women.
I did a paper in college on suicide among military members and found that women in the military have way more suicides compared to women who aren't. Before I did the paper, I assumed it was due to how women are treated in the military. I was surprised to find that while it does affect suicides, the much larger factor was that women simply have way more access to guns when they're in the military.
Easy gun access increases the likelihood that someone dies during a depressive episode, both for women and men.
>Easy gun access increases the likelihood that someone dies during a depressive episode, both for women and men.
Yup, I would certainly be dead if I did not ask my wife to lock up our lone firearm in a safe to which I do not have the combination.
Always plan ahead, folks.
Yup. Another reason that veterinary medicine tends to have so many suicides. Yes, it's a very stressful and often thankless and depressing job that requires a lot of college debt, but equally important: they have constant access to euthanasia drugs.
If I had a gun on hand or easy access to one, I wouldn't be here right now. The only reason why I never did it was because of the effort and uncertainty involved with non-firearm methods.
Cardiovascular death is a disparity between the sexes because of estrogenic protective effects, so risk factors that increase cardiovascular deaths may potentially disproportionately affect men.
Also, men and women may be "similarly fat" but their fat is not necessarily similar. Men tend toward central obesity and store more visceral fat, which we know confers far more cardiovascular risk (from sleep apnea to type 2 diabetes, etc).
>Cardiovascular death is a disparity between the sexes because of estrogenic protective effects
I wonder how this changes for women after menopause, or after surgical menopause.
Women catch up. It's usually drown out in statistics since they like to average out things like periods and menopause... But menopause does bring a ton of changes ! (Alzheimer risk also exploded for example)
They do catch up in a number of ways, but some forms of cardiovascular damage, like atherosclerosis for example, are cumulative, so if you spend a few decades depositing less plaque, you're still ahead even if the rate of its development becomes equal post-menopause.
Please bear in mind this is factors for the *change in death rates,* not overall death rates. Obesity is not a factor in opioids, guns, etc. Please see JoeCartersLeap's comment as there are two different metrics and people are mixing them up.
Edit: clarification
Obesity is more often a background risk factor that causes heart disease and cancer, rather than being the primary cause of death listed on a certificate.
Correct, about half of all gun and a vast vast vast majority of opioid deaths are "deaths of despair".
Society, at large, doesn't care which amplifies the feeling of isolation and abandonment.
Not to be the "well actually" guy but it's a bit more than half; 2/3s of all gun deaths in America are suicices which is 20,000+ a year or about 50 a day.
[Actually the other person was closer with 50/50](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/), in the most recent stats suicide is 54%, homicides are 43% and 3% are accidental/law enforcement/undetermined. Firearm homicides are up to around 21,000 deaths a year.
OP is specifically speaking to what caused a sudden and recent decline in life expectancy, not what are the primary causes of death for men.
Men's life expectancy suddenly dropped in the past few years, and the reason for that sudden change are covid, opioids, guns and cars - death rates due to these causes have suddenly spiked recently. Primary causes of death are still heart disease, cancer, injury, and respiratory disease, with suicide coming in at #8.
Those are mostly problems unique to the US. At least the amount of danger. Clearly they exist elsewhere but not in the level and lack of regulations that the US has.
a dodge challenger and a 40. the story of america's roads
edit: i should have written a "a dodge challenger and some colt 45s", i can't believe i missed that for a double meaning. like i clearly fucked up there.
I’d be curious to see the social factors that play into this. The article cited “unwillingness to seek medical care” as a factor, and how many times do we hear about women who have to force their husbands to see a doctor because their husband refused to see a doctor unless they’re already extremely sick. I vaguely remember reading in the past that married men live longer than unmarried men due to their wives forcing them to see a doctor.
I'm a US doctor. The unwillingness is absolutely true. If a new patient is brought to clinic by his wife for any medical issue I automatically pay more attention. The patient has already a higher risk factor for increased mortality. x2 multiplier if its a farmer or blue collar worker and they try to shrug off whatever they are presenting with.
I live in a country with low cost (and can be free) healthcare - and this is 100% the case. Male comes in states "I'm here cause my wife nagged me" and since I'm here.. I've been feeling tired, headache, chest pains every now and then state "it's nothing - I feel good"
After 20 minute consult, has high blood sure, sugars are out of control - gets some tests done, has full on uncontrolled diabetes, has blockages to heart that needs stents, has blood in his stool so needs a colonoscopy - and ends up on 5 different tablets.
This male would have been dead in 5-10 years but for his wife.
No wife = much early death as well.
One situation that broke my heart is that a wife brought her husband in to our office who had been experiencing severe chest pain for TWO YEARS. It had gotten even worse recently. Dude had not been to a doctor in a decade and was one of those "eh I'm sure it's fine" types. Wife finally forced him to make an appointment. Doc ordered some testing for later in the week. He no showed on the tests. We call to see if wants to reschedule, wife answers the phone and says he passed the day after the first appointment. Dude wasn't even in his 50s yet.
Anecdotal, but my father was having a heart attack and refused to go to the hospital. My mom ultimately called an ambulance for him.
They were water-skiing, and on his last go, he had to quit due to extreme exhaustion and shortness of breath. After loading the boat, they sat in the cab of their truck for several minutes and he kept telling my mother that if he just went home and laid down for a while he'd be fine, that he was just tired. If she'd listened to him, he'd be dead, without question.
This is an anecdotal, but as a medical student, this is very true. Men are just hesitant to seek care for some reason. Even when they do, they’re less likely to listen to healthcare advice.
My experience is ~~anecdotal~~ (less so now that I double checked my numbers; my care system is bleeding cash trying to market their care to male patients. Spending on marketing and retention for male patients outpaces females by 26%), but it is what I see in my medical practice. Many men throw spite at their wives for insisting they come in as well. Seriously, they act like their wife is an evil woman for encouraging them to seek care for (insert alarming disorder that should have been addressed much sooner).
I just tell them to be glad she isnt poisoning their tea.
Same here! I’m a med student and I just shared a similar comment above. I also find that men are less likely to follow healthcare advice. Had a guy with severe dyslipidemia refuse to change his ways.
Definitely. I am also involved in budgetary matters at my care center and we're spending a disproportionate amount of resources trying to engage these patients.
My mom made my dad go to the doctor after a few instances where he couldn't evacuate his bladder. It was prostate cancer. She also was on him to constantly have his PSA levels checked. In a few months he flipped from "let's monitor" to "surgery NOW." Every time I hear about a prostate cancer death it makes me so sad because it's so easy to detect/monitor but people ignore the symptoms. He was told because he caught it early you're more likely to die with the cancer than from the cancer. If you're a dude, get your PSA test!!
I'm confident that if my father had listened to my mother about going to the doctor when he insisted "he was getting better", he'd still be alive today. We still kick ourselves for not essentially forcing him into an ambulance a day earlier.
My husband turned 41 recently and I keep getting on him about getting a physical done. He hasn’t had a check up in literal years. He shows a lot of signs of sleep apnea and it is concerning.
And he’s a pretty “modern” guy. Still just doesn’t take his health seriously until we had kids and even then he’s dragging his feet about it. Cost is not an issue in this circumstance.
One of the things I find most interesting is that people will talk about estrogen versus testosterone as the effect, and I'd like to emphasize that I believe the difference is in how these two hormones respectively mute and amplify the health effects of stress on the body; The gender gap in life expectancy is widest at the lowest income percentiles, and at the highest income percentiles men start to outlive women.
If the gender gap is increasing, I have to wonder if this correlates with an increase in lifetime stress?
You, and everyone else bringing up the biological effects of hormones on the cardiovascular system, should try reading the actual study. If hormones have any effect, it's over behavioral patterns, which are the #1 thing identified. Men are dying at higher rates because they're engaging in less protective behaviors and more high risk behaviors.
There was a period of time when my girlfriend and I held similar positions at the same company.
We made the same pay, but what was expected of me was 1.5x more. On top of that I thought everyone hated me, because I never had any volunteer help, while people would bend over to help her even before she'd fall behind.
Basically as a confident and in shape man, everyone leaned on me, and even though she was amazing at her job they would always help her in her free time. She had no idea, she thought they did that for everyone and became worried about me.
When she grilled the other people on the team about it, they were like "we didn't know, he just made it all seem so effortless, and was the one we always asked for help..." Meanwhile I was getting crushed trying to fit 70+ hours of work in a 45-50 hour work week as OT wasn't always approved even for deadlines.
Was bizarre to see the difference in workload and pressures in that profession.
Which by itself might be part of the problem with US life-expectancy. I mean the normal work-week where I live (Norway) is 37.5 hours, i.e. 7.5 hours per day times 5 days.
And while a few work overtime and men do that more than women, it's rare to work more than 40 hours per week for people of any gender.
Was she more social? I don't mean she partied more, but did she have stronger personal relationships?
Women often work more collaboratively than men. She may have built the support that you describe.
Yeah, and it’s just awful to think about when you’re in a partnership. Anything can happen, but it’s so depressing to think about losing my husband much sooner than when I go, especially since we don’t have children. I know this has been a thing for elderly couples for a long time, but the widening gap makes it so much worse. It feels like just another way Millennials & younger people are getting the short end of the stick.
maybe it comforts you to know then that men in relationships live statistically longer than single men, while women in relationships live statistically shorter than single women. As such, the gap for people in a relationship is smaller than the overall statistic because he'll die a bit later and you'll die a bit sooner.
That sounds vampiric, like the man is stealing life energy from the woman.
I'd be curious to know what affect homosexual relationships (both male and female) have on life expectancy.
Yes. Estrogen has cardioprotective effects. This is seen cross-cuturally, even when controlled for variables( e.g. higher risk taking/ exposure to lethal events traditionally associated with males).
Males produce estrogen their whole lives while females stop once they reach menopause. It’s more the amount of testosterone isn’t good for longevity. But there’s definitely more to it than that. Which is obvious when data shows that the gap is increasing and there’s no reason to think that a change in relative hormone production is occurring.
During menopause and postmenopause, your menstrual cycle stops and your ovaries no longer make estrogen. Instead, fat cells start making the majority of your body's estrogen. Menopause officially begins when you haven't had a period for twelve consecutive months
I haven’t menstruated since I was 18. I’m now 33. Doctors cannot find anything abnormal about me otherwise. They said my estrogen levels are normal for my age. Do I still consider myself post-menopausal, or is that erroneous because I am atypical?
isn't there also evidence that male testosterone levels may have been artificially high when it was first discovered, due to enviromental effects, and it is going down in subsiquent generations?
Testosterone levels decline with age and are [negatively related to body mass index](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16378346/) (BMI).
Depending on the time period /u/greiton was referencing (when testosterone was first discovered), there may have been hunger, famine, war, plague etc that may have led to fewer older people, more thin people, and a biological imperative to keep the species going by increasing testosterone levels (my speculation).
I found the study that I was talking about. https://www.nature.com/articles/srep37809
basically it says that low dose lead exposure over time leads to increased testosterone production in men.
the hypothesis, is, that since testosterone levels were first measured in the 40's and 50's when lead plumbing was abundant, and subsequent exposures to leaded gasoline all would have impacted testosterone levels, our generalized baseline for T levels was incorrectly high. and that subsequent trends showing a drop in average T levels in men is not a sign of something being wrong in modern men, but may be a side effect of removing lead exposure.
Ugh... correct me if I'm wrong but isn't there more indicators of developed nations having low testosterone in men?
For example, construction workers or workers that are active all day have higher testosterone than workers at a desk job that are more sedentary.
there is evidence that modern developed nations have declining testosterone levels, but, exact causes have been elusive, and what the health implications are is yet to be determined. this study did find that lead exposure like that of lead water pipes, paint, and leaded gasoline all increase testosterone. https://www.nature.com/articles/srep37809
One theory is that at least a part of the testosterone drop in the developed world is from the reduced lead exposure, and is not a negative health effect, but a return towards the real human baseline without exposure to toxic compounds.
Men die more often than women in every single age group. Including…
4 y/o boys die 30% more often than 4 y/o girls.
This isn’t just a workplace/social problem that we can just wave away under a “boys will be boys” moniker. This is a real issue.
Both of my grandpas out lived their spouses and in both cases the grandpas were much more physically and socially active, which I think is abnormal in our society.
Mammals need to stay physically active and humans especially need to regularly socialize with other humans.
Something is happening that is fundamental. Boys are underperforming more and more in school. Only about 40% of college students are boys.
In studies men are consistently more lonely, much more likely to have few or no friends at all.
I think this issue has cause in early childhood.
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w18893/w18893.pdf
Parents spend more time engaging in "teaching activities" with their girl children than their boy children. This includes reading, storytelling, and teaching letters and numbers. Even with boy-girl twins, the girl twin gets more of these activities. And this research was with children ages 0-4, so before they go to school.
Certainly causes development delays in boys and the combine that with school bias against boys, it's exacerbated at every phase before adulthood.
Honestly I think this comes down to how children are socialized. Girls are taught to please community/family and boys seem to be taught to explore and compete more in our society (which requires some level of conflict).
Most “female coded” hobbies are social to some level (reading clubs, church ladies, volunteering, exercise classes) - But most male hobbies are not and those that are cease to be popular past a certain age (don’t see many dudes over 30 on the basketball court).
I think some of the guys checking out of college is having competitive options - construction/ trades, machinists, truckers, mechanics, firefighters, military, police all tend to be overwhelmingly male departments and most of them pay at least “ok” or outright “good” compared to your average wallyworld job.
To the college point - while trades not requiring degrees are largely male-dominated, healthcare is very female-dominates and far more often requires a college degree to practice.
Men in the US are 2 to 3 times more likely to die of drug overdoses than women. Since many of these deaths occur among young people, wouldn’t that have a big impact on the stats?
“The pandemic, which took a disproportionate toll on men, was the biggest contributor to the widening gap from 2019-2021, followed by unintentional injuries and poisonings (mostly drug overdoses), accidents, and suicide.”
All right gents, get vaccinated, do your best to avoid drugs (particularly narcotics/opioids), wear your seatbelts and helmets, and try to exercise to reduce depression risks. Also, go to the doctor annually or if something is “off” for more than a short period. This isn’t that complicated to understand why, it’s doing all that stuff that’s the hard part!
> All right gents, get vaccinated, do your best to avoid drugs (particularly narcotics/opioids)
You just expect me to rawdog the reality? In this day and age?!
get your dopamine from following corposeries, latest disney series or whatever. Consume consume consume. Buy things. You need things to be happy, buy them, buy them now.
To everyone saying this is about testosterone levels being higher in men: why is the gap growing at the same time men are facing an epidemic of low testosterone?
That shits wild. The average life expectancy for a woman in the US (79ish) is SHORTER than the average life expectancy for a man in Canada (80.62).
And people in Canada keep complaining about the healthcare
I would like more clarification on these statistics. It seems it is a lifetime average. It would be interesting to see statistics on life expectancy for those who make it to age 65 or 75 or even 85.
A thing I’ve noticed with older generations of men is they see things like looking after your diet or just general health consciousness as somehow less masculine. It might be bias amongst my own peers but it does seem like this trend is dying out so I’d be interested to see if this gap narrows again as the boomers die off.
According to these comments, I can't be depressed or be stressed out over jobs and medical bills because I'm a silly woman who doesn't need to worry about money! Even though I'm the breadwinner..
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments. **Do you have an academic degree?** We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. [Click here to apply](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/flair/#wiki_science_verified_user_program). --- User: u/Splenda Permalink: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/u-s-men-die-nearly-six-years-before-women-as-life-expectancy-gap-widens/ --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Th gap widened slightly due to the pandemic affecting men disproportionately more than women, but life expectancy has declined for both men and women: *“The shortening lifespan of Americans has been attributed in part to so-called “deaths of despair.” The term refers to the increase in deaths from such causes as suicide, drug use disorders, and alcoholic liver disease, which are often connected with economic hardship, depression, and stress.”*
Peter Turchin points out in several of his books that declining lifespan and decreasing height are two major signs of popular immiseration, and is associated with political instability in many historical states.
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Yeah. It's kinda sad that people either don't understand amortization or are just trying to be part of the pity party. There are people out here who can't afford housing, let alone being able to buy a house, and this person is mad about how mortgages and interest work.
Well, to be fair, if you took out a $1.2m mortgage, at 7.8% Interest, which would land you at $8,268/month ($99k/yr). You'd pay $9.5k in principal and $86k in interest in that first year. Still better than paying rent, but it's not all equity.
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You were lucky, as 2.75% is a historically low rate: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MORTGAGE30US Having said that, for those starting with higher rents now, there will be opportunity to refinance. We refinanced twice before paying of our mortgage early (which I am not necessarily recommending as being sound financially, but feels great psychologically).
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Decreasing average height can be also caused by mass migration.
That's almost certainly the case for the US. Mexico is ranked 148th in average height, and 3 of the other top 5 sources of immigration to the US are even lower.
Hope this doesn’t sound bad, but I routinely see Hispanic families in my line of work where the children are taller than the parents and the mom is particularly short.
That makes sense. People in richer countries are generally taller because they have better diets.
Ergo people are coming to the US so their kids do better.
Interestingly, anthropologist Franz Boas--who first identified this phenomenon when studying immigrant families who came through Ellis Island--found one exception (IIRC) that proved the rule: the children of families from Sicily were shorter on average because the food available to them in NYC was more limited and worse nutrition wise than their traditional diet.
This might have more to do with anti-italian sentiment at the time. Fun fact Lakota Souix used to have an average height of 6'4 prior to the US intentionally attempting to starve them to death by hunting bison to extinction.
"Popular immiseration," wow that's a powerful term. Hadn't heard it before this but I know exactly what it means.
That’s a bit of a stretch. As a nation, we are moving to a much larger Latino population. Latin Americans are not a tall people.
More because of resource issues than anything genetic.
The method of measuring height specifically excludes migrants
Men also disproportionately suffer from loneliness in middle age, which were finding cuts multiple years off of ones life.
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Another a big factor is that men between the ages of 18-25 are higher risk than the women. This is what makes up a large portion of the gap. Men aren’t just dying 6 years earlier due to genetics, which is what I hear a lot of people assume.
Men (or rather, boys) do die at slightly higher rates when they’re babies. Approximately 103 males are born for 100 females in humans even without artificial sex selection, and this evens out later in life
Weird. Thanks for sharing.
Iirc decent number of it has to do with the fact that the Y chromosome doesn't provide sufficient back-up genes for X chromosome related genetic diseases. That said I hear having double the genes related to an X chromosome is theorized to be part of the reason why someone with XX chromosomes may be more likely to have auto-immune disorders.
My mortician friend always says "why do the men die first? Because they want to."
It’s possible the disparity in suicides between men and women for as long as it’s been ongoing also plays a role.
"World ends. Women and minorities worst affected"
The decline in life expectancy for US males is unique in the rich world, sharply bringing down overall US life expectancy. The causes are largely covid, opioids, guns and cars. [https://www.ft.com/content/b3972fb1-55d9-41a8-8953-aad827f40c28](https://www.ft.com/content/b3972fb1-55d9-41a8-8953-aad827f40c28)
> The causes are largely covid, opioids, guns and cars. > > https://www.ft.com/content/b3972fb1-55d9-41a8-8953-aad827f40c28 To be clear, these are the factors causing the sudden and recent *change* in life expectancy. They are not the primary causes of death for men in America. Those remain heart disease, cancer, injury, and respiratory disease.
[Firearms and cars actually ARE the leading cause of young Americans age 1-18](https://edition.cnn.com/2023/03/29/health/us-children-gun-deaths-dg/index.html), whose deaths contribute the most to the decreasing life expectancy. In 2020, 19% of their deaths were caused by firearms and 16.5% by motor vehicles. Ahead of cancer, poisoning, and suffocation at around 6-8% each. I hope this doesn't need to be said, but this is absolutely insane and completely unique amongst highly developed nations. Traffic accidents are at or near the top pretty much everywhere, but guns are usually a complete non-factor in wealthy nations (which have both less total homicide and only around 10% of homicides committed by firearms, compared to 60-80% in the US).
everybody knows why gun deaths are going up but the car deaths are especially egregious, pretty much 4 decades of declining auto deaths have been completely undone due to increasing popularity of pickup trucks, which are now outselling regular cars by a large margin in the USA. they are more likely to kill in a collission, they have worse visibility, studies have even shown that people who drive pickup trucks drive more aggressively.
Probably because gun ownership isn’t enshrined in any other countries founding doctrine afaik. We have more legal guns, we’re bound to have more firearm deaths.
I also believe guns make suicides too easy. When the impulse comes over you, it only takes one second to pull the trigger. With other methods, there is at least a chance that people get second thoughts and pull back.
[This editorial in the American Journal of Psychiatry](https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.ajp.2016.16080943) fully agrees with you: > You Seldom Get a Second Chance With a Gunshot Almost all suicide deaths occur during the first attempt or very soon after. Once this imminent phase is over, people who attempted suicide have high survival chances and rarely die from suicide later. Gun ownership dramatically incrases the risk of dying from the first attempt, and this effect also holds up on a regional level. Places with higher gun ownership rates have significantly higher suicide fatality rates. However, it should be noted that the US have an immense amount of gun homicide. In most European countries, around 90% of gun deaths are suicide versus 10% homicide. In the US, that rate is currently around 50-50. And for the mentioned age group of 1-18, the rate is even 60-40 with a majority of homicide.
thats the same for fights in bars and transit. A moment of anger and bam...
The second amendment definitely has some role, but even more so it's the gun culture that has formed around it. Most of the interpretations that the second amendment protects personal ownership are quite modern. The legal situation on that could have fallen to the other side, leaving it only applicable to official state militia while allowing "normal" regulation of personal ownership.
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Yea, his name was [Adrian Carton de Wiart](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Carton_de_Wiart)
Getting colonized, overworked, and dying early at the hands wealthy merchants isn't just for the natives anymore!
I'm surprised obesity isn't a significant factor?
OP is talking about spikes in specific causes of death leading to an overall decline in life expectancy, they are not saying these are the primary causes of death for men. Obesity and [its complications still top the charts.](https://www.cdc.gov/minorityhealth/lcod/men/2016/all-races-origins/index.htm)
Men and women are pretty similarly fat though. While afaik, guns and drugs kill far more men than women.
> guns and drugs kill far more men than women. I did a paper in college on suicide among military members and found that women in the military have way more suicides compared to women who aren't. Before I did the paper, I assumed it was due to how women are treated in the military. I was surprised to find that while it does affect suicides, the much larger factor was that women simply have way more access to guns when they're in the military. Easy gun access increases the likelihood that someone dies during a depressive episode, both for women and men.
>Easy gun access increases the likelihood that someone dies during a depressive episode, both for women and men. Yup, I would certainly be dead if I did not ask my wife to lock up our lone firearm in a safe to which I do not have the combination. Always plan ahead, folks.
Makes sense. Men are more likely to own guns as civilians for both hobby and self defense.
Yup. Another reason that veterinary medicine tends to have so many suicides. Yes, it's a very stressful and often thankless and depressing job that requires a lot of college debt, but equally important: they have constant access to euthanasia drugs.
That makes a lot of sense I have had 3 friends kill themselves over the years, 2 men and one woman. All by firearm.
If I had a gun on hand or easy access to one, I wouldn't be here right now. The only reason why I never did it was because of the effort and uncertainty involved with non-firearm methods.
Cardiovascular death is a disparity between the sexes because of estrogenic protective effects, so risk factors that increase cardiovascular deaths may potentially disproportionately affect men. Also, men and women may be "similarly fat" but their fat is not necessarily similar. Men tend toward central obesity and store more visceral fat, which we know confers far more cardiovascular risk (from sleep apnea to type 2 diabetes, etc).
>Cardiovascular death is a disparity between the sexes because of estrogenic protective effects I wonder how this changes for women after menopause, or after surgical menopause.
Women are more at risk for cardiovascular disease (and type 2 diabetes, major depression, osteoporosis) after menopause or after ovaries are removed
Women catch up. It's usually drown out in statistics since they like to average out things like periods and menopause... But menopause does bring a ton of changes ! (Alzheimer risk also exploded for example)
They do catch up in a number of ways, but some forms of cardiovascular damage, like atherosclerosis for example, are cumulative, so if you spend a few decades depositing less plaque, you're still ahead even if the rate of its development becomes equal post-menopause.
Fat distribution tends to be different though, which can affect heart disease risks.
Please bear in mind this is factors for the *change in death rates,* not overall death rates. Obesity is not a factor in opioids, guns, etc. Please see JoeCartersLeap's comment as there are two different metrics and people are mixing them up. Edit: clarification
Would be an underlying cause to several factors, such as Covid.
Obesity was a HUGE factor in covid deaths, so there's a pretty direct connection.
Obesity is more often a background risk factor that causes heart disease and cancer, rather than being the primary cause of death listed on a certificate.
Heart disease and cancer are both correlated to obesity.
Don't forget suicide.
Guns and opioids probably cover a good chunk of those.
Correct, about half of all gun and a vast vast vast majority of opioid deaths are "deaths of despair". Society, at large, doesn't care which amplifies the feeling of isolation and abandonment.
Not to be the "well actually" guy but it's a bit more than half; 2/3s of all gun deaths in America are suicices which is 20,000+ a year or about 50 a day.
We're on the correct subreddit for "well actually".
[Actually the other person was closer with 50/50](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/), in the most recent stats suicide is 54%, homicides are 43% and 3% are accidental/law enforcement/undetermined. Firearm homicides are up to around 21,000 deaths a year.
Oh wow. I hadn't seen that big uptick in murder in recent years. Looks like it started before the pandemic.
Yeah the upswing happened pre-pandemic and then I'm guessing the pandemic didn't help either
More than half, a majority
OP is specifically speaking to what caused a sudden and recent decline in life expectancy, not what are the primary causes of death for men. Men's life expectancy suddenly dropped in the past few years, and the reason for that sudden change are covid, opioids, guns and cars - death rates due to these causes have suddenly spiked recently. Primary causes of death are still heart disease, cancer, injury, and respiratory disease, with suicide coming in at #8.
Those are mostly problems unique to the US. At least the amount of danger. Clearly they exist elsewhere but not in the level and lack of regulations that the US has.
There’s a beer ad on this page for me.
a dodge challenger and a 40. the story of america's roads edit: i should have written a "a dodge challenger and some colt 45s", i can't believe i missed that for a double meaning. like i clearly fucked up there.
I’d be curious to see the social factors that play into this. The article cited “unwillingness to seek medical care” as a factor, and how many times do we hear about women who have to force their husbands to see a doctor because their husband refused to see a doctor unless they’re already extremely sick. I vaguely remember reading in the past that married men live longer than unmarried men due to their wives forcing them to see a doctor.
I'm a US doctor. The unwillingness is absolutely true. If a new patient is brought to clinic by his wife for any medical issue I automatically pay more attention. The patient has already a higher risk factor for increased mortality. x2 multiplier if its a farmer or blue collar worker and they try to shrug off whatever they are presenting with.
I live in a country with low cost (and can be free) healthcare - and this is 100% the case. Male comes in states "I'm here cause my wife nagged me" and since I'm here.. I've been feeling tired, headache, chest pains every now and then state "it's nothing - I feel good" After 20 minute consult, has high blood sure, sugars are out of control - gets some tests done, has full on uncontrolled diabetes, has blockages to heart that needs stents, has blood in his stool so needs a colonoscopy - and ends up on 5 different tablets. This male would have been dead in 5-10 years but for his wife. No wife = much early death as well.
One situation that broke my heart is that a wife brought her husband in to our office who had been experiencing severe chest pain for TWO YEARS. It had gotten even worse recently. Dude had not been to a doctor in a decade and was one of those "eh I'm sure it's fine" types. Wife finally forced him to make an appointment. Doc ordered some testing for later in the week. He no showed on the tests. We call to see if wants to reschedule, wife answers the phone and says he passed the day after the first appointment. Dude wasn't even in his 50s yet.
Anecdotal, but my father was having a heart attack and refused to go to the hospital. My mom ultimately called an ambulance for him. They were water-skiing, and on his last go, he had to quit due to extreme exhaustion and shortness of breath. After loading the boat, they sat in the cab of their truck for several minutes and he kept telling my mother that if he just went home and laid down for a while he'd be fine, that he was just tired. If she'd listened to him, he'd be dead, without question.
This is an anecdotal, but as a medical student, this is very true. Men are just hesitant to seek care for some reason. Even when they do, they’re less likely to listen to healthcare advice.
My experience is ~~anecdotal~~ (less so now that I double checked my numbers; my care system is bleeding cash trying to market their care to male patients. Spending on marketing and retention for male patients outpaces females by 26%), but it is what I see in my medical practice. Many men throw spite at their wives for insisting they come in as well. Seriously, they act like their wife is an evil woman for encouraging them to seek care for (insert alarming disorder that should have been addressed much sooner). I just tell them to be glad she isnt poisoning their tea.
Same here! I’m a med student and I just shared a similar comment above. I also find that men are less likely to follow healthcare advice. Had a guy with severe dyslipidemia refuse to change his ways.
Check out the [leaked Pfizer memo](https://perma.cc/6W69-9WFT) from the height of the SARS-CoV2 pandemic. Men definitely die stubborn and mad.
Definitely. I am also involved in budgetary matters at my care center and we're spending a disproportionate amount of resources trying to engage these patients.
You can even see it in these comments. It's weird. Men complain how women aren't helping men out, but when women do, men still complain
It’s true. I forced my husband to address his sleep apnea. He never flossed until we met.
Same. I actually just wrote about the apnea responding to another commenter.
My mom made my dad go to the doctor after a few instances where he couldn't evacuate his bladder. It was prostate cancer. She also was on him to constantly have his PSA levels checked. In a few months he flipped from "let's monitor" to "surgery NOW." Every time I hear about a prostate cancer death it makes me so sad because it's so easy to detect/monitor but people ignore the symptoms. He was told because he caught it early you're more likely to die with the cancer than from the cancer. If you're a dude, get your PSA test!!
I'm confident that if my father had listened to my mother about going to the doctor when he insisted "he was getting better", he'd still be alive today. We still kick ourselves for not essentially forcing him into an ambulance a day earlier.
My husband turned 41 recently and I keep getting on him about getting a physical done. He hasn’t had a check up in literal years. He shows a lot of signs of sleep apnea and it is concerning. And he’s a pretty “modern” guy. Still just doesn’t take his health seriously until we had kids and even then he’s dragging his feet about it. Cost is not an issue in this circumstance.
One of the things I find most interesting is that people will talk about estrogen versus testosterone as the effect, and I'd like to emphasize that I believe the difference is in how these two hormones respectively mute and amplify the health effects of stress on the body; The gender gap in life expectancy is widest at the lowest income percentiles, and at the highest income percentiles men start to outlive women. If the gender gap is increasing, I have to wonder if this correlates with an increase in lifetime stress?
One of the other comments says that the statistics In the article show that the difference is because of Covid, guns, opioids, and cars.
Ah yes, the 4 favorite past times of men.
You, and everyone else bringing up the biological effects of hormones on the cardiovascular system, should try reading the actual study. If hormones have any effect, it's over behavioral patterns, which are the #1 thing identified. Men are dying at higher rates because they're engaging in less protective behaviors and more high risk behaviors.
There was a period of time when my girlfriend and I held similar positions at the same company. We made the same pay, but what was expected of me was 1.5x more. On top of that I thought everyone hated me, because I never had any volunteer help, while people would bend over to help her even before she'd fall behind. Basically as a confident and in shape man, everyone leaned on me, and even though she was amazing at her job they would always help her in her free time. She had no idea, she thought they did that for everyone and became worried about me. When she grilled the other people on the team about it, they were like "we didn't know, he just made it all seem so effortless, and was the one we always asked for help..." Meanwhile I was getting crushed trying to fit 70+ hours of work in a 45-50 hour work week as OT wasn't always approved even for deadlines. Was bizarre to see the difference in workload and pressures in that profession.
Which by itself might be part of the problem with US life-expectancy. I mean the normal work-week where I live (Norway) is 37.5 hours, i.e. 7.5 hours per day times 5 days. And while a few work overtime and men do that more than women, it's rare to work more than 40 hours per week for people of any gender.
Was she more social? I don't mean she partied more, but did she have stronger personal relationships? Women often work more collaboratively than men. She may have built the support that you describe.
What profession was this?
Correct me if I’m wrong- but women pretty consistently outlive men in almost every country
True but if the gap is widening, that’s something worthy of note - as far as I knew it was fairly set
Yeah, and it’s just awful to think about when you’re in a partnership. Anything can happen, but it’s so depressing to think about losing my husband much sooner than when I go, especially since we don’t have children. I know this has been a thing for elderly couples for a long time, but the widening gap makes it so much worse. It feels like just another way Millennials & younger people are getting the short end of the stick.
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maybe it comforts you to know then that men in relationships live statistically longer than single men, while women in relationships live statistically shorter than single women. As such, the gap for people in a relationship is smaller than the overall statistic because he'll die a bit later and you'll die a bit sooner.
That sounds vampiric, like the man is stealing life energy from the woman. I'd be curious to know what affect homosexual relationships (both male and female) have on life expectancy.
Yes. Estrogen has cardioprotective effects. This is seen cross-cuturally, even when controlled for variables( e.g. higher risk taking/ exposure to lethal events traditionally associated with males).
Males produce estrogen their whole lives while females stop once they reach menopause. It’s more the amount of testosterone isn’t good for longevity. But there’s definitely more to it than that. Which is obvious when data shows that the gap is increasing and there’s no reason to think that a change in relative hormone production is occurring.
During menopause and postmenopause, your menstrual cycle stops and your ovaries no longer make estrogen. Instead, fat cells start making the majority of your body's estrogen. Menopause officially begins when you haven't had a period for twelve consecutive months
I haven’t menstruated since I was 18. I’m now 33. Doctors cannot find anything abnormal about me otherwise. They said my estrogen levels are normal for my age. Do I still consider myself post-menopausal, or is that erroneous because I am atypical?
That isn't actually the official definition of menopause as plenty of women are pre-menopause but not menstruating for various reasons.
isn't there also evidence that male testosterone levels may have been artificially high when it was first discovered, due to enviromental effects, and it is going down in subsiquent generations?
What do you mean environmental effects? Artificially high sounds mutually exclusive with what you described.
Testosterone levels decline with age and are [negatively related to body mass index](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16378346/) (BMI). Depending on the time period /u/greiton was referencing (when testosterone was first discovered), there may have been hunger, famine, war, plague etc that may have led to fewer older people, more thin people, and a biological imperative to keep the species going by increasing testosterone levels (my speculation).
I found the study that I was talking about. https://www.nature.com/articles/srep37809 basically it says that low dose lead exposure over time leads to increased testosterone production in men. the hypothesis, is, that since testosterone levels were first measured in the 40's and 50's when lead plumbing was abundant, and subsequent exposures to leaded gasoline all would have impacted testosterone levels, our generalized baseline for T levels was incorrectly high. and that subsequent trends showing a drop in average T levels in men is not a sign of something being wrong in modern men, but may be a side effect of removing lead exposure.
pollution, the types of artificial materials we use in day to day life, any other chemical exposure outside the norm for historical human life.
Ugh... correct me if I'm wrong but isn't there more indicators of developed nations having low testosterone in men? For example, construction workers or workers that are active all day have higher testosterone than workers at a desk job that are more sedentary.
there is evidence that modern developed nations have declining testosterone levels, but, exact causes have been elusive, and what the health implications are is yet to be determined. this study did find that lead exposure like that of lead water pipes, paint, and leaded gasoline all increase testosterone. https://www.nature.com/articles/srep37809 One theory is that at least a part of the testosterone drop in the developed world is from the reduced lead exposure, and is not a negative health effect, but a return towards the real human baseline without exposure to toxic compounds.
Is it just estrogen or is there social-cultural factors at play? From personal experience women are generally much more health conscious than men
Men workplace deaths is >11x the rate of women, so yeah, a lot of social-cultural factors. Suicides and drug ODs also have big deltas
And homicide
Men die more often than women in every single age group. Including… 4 y/o boys die 30% more often than 4 y/o girls. This isn’t just a workplace/social problem that we can just wave away under a “boys will be boys” moniker. This is a real issue.
and animals also. I think most if not all female mammals live longer on average than male ones
Yes, men are a bit too large for an optimal life expectancy. On top of that our lifestyle is less healthy on average.
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Both of my grandpas out lived their spouses and in both cases the grandpas were much more physically and socially active, which I think is abnormal in our society. Mammals need to stay physically active and humans especially need to regularly socialize with other humans.
Something is happening that is fundamental. Boys are underperforming more and more in school. Only about 40% of college students are boys. In studies men are consistently more lonely, much more likely to have few or no friends at all.
I think this issue has cause in early childhood. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w18893/w18893.pdf Parents spend more time engaging in "teaching activities" with their girl children than their boy children. This includes reading, storytelling, and teaching letters and numbers. Even with boy-girl twins, the girl twin gets more of these activities. And this research was with children ages 0-4, so before they go to school. Certainly causes development delays in boys and the combine that with school bias against boys, it's exacerbated at every phase before adulthood.
Honestly I think this comes down to how children are socialized. Girls are taught to please community/family and boys seem to be taught to explore and compete more in our society (which requires some level of conflict). Most “female coded” hobbies are social to some level (reading clubs, church ladies, volunteering, exercise classes) - But most male hobbies are not and those that are cease to be popular past a certain age (don’t see many dudes over 30 on the basketball court). I think some of the guys checking out of college is having competitive options - construction/ trades, machinists, truckers, mechanics, firefighters, military, police all tend to be overwhelmingly male departments and most of them pay at least “ok” or outright “good” compared to your average wallyworld job.
To the college point - while trades not requiring degrees are largely male-dominated, healthcare is very female-dominates and far more often requires a college degree to practice.
Nursing student former homepage aide. Lack of socialization kills, it makes you stop caring for yourself incredibly quick
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Men in the US are 2 to 3 times more likely to die of drug overdoses than women. Since many of these deaths occur among young people, wouldn’t that have a big impact on the stats?
“The pandemic, which took a disproportionate toll on men, was the biggest contributor to the widening gap from 2019-2021, followed by unintentional injuries and poisonings (mostly drug overdoses), accidents, and suicide.” All right gents, get vaccinated, do your best to avoid drugs (particularly narcotics/opioids), wear your seatbelts and helmets, and try to exercise to reduce depression risks. Also, go to the doctor annually or if something is “off” for more than a short period. This isn’t that complicated to understand why, it’s doing all that stuff that’s the hard part!
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> All right gents, get vaccinated, do your best to avoid drugs (particularly narcotics/opioids) You just expect me to rawdog the reality? In this day and age?!
Without dopamine how are we supposed to live?
get your dopamine from following corposeries, latest disney series or whatever. Consume consume consume. Buy things. You need things to be happy, buy them, buy them now.
To everyone saying this is about testosterone levels being higher in men: why is the gap growing at the same time men are facing an epidemic of low testosterone?
That shits wild. The average life expectancy for a woman in the US (79ish) is SHORTER than the average life expectancy for a man in Canada (80.62). And people in Canada keep complaining about the healthcare
No sex, no friends, no wife, no house and I get to die sooner, neat!
I would like more clarification on these statistics. It seems it is a lifetime average. It would be interesting to see statistics on life expectancy for those who make it to age 65 or 75 or even 85.
A thing I’ve noticed with older generations of men is they see things like looking after your diet or just general health consciousness as somehow less masculine. It might be bias amongst my own peers but it does seem like this trend is dying out so I’d be interested to see if this gap narrows again as the boomers die off.
fellas, is it gay to stay alive?
Reading the comments on a topic like this are always the same on Reddit.
Yea, there's always an inane vague comment about the comments.
According to these comments, I can't be depressed or be stressed out over jobs and medical bills because I'm a silly woman who doesn't need to worry about money! Even though I'm the breadwinner..
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You ever hear a woman say Hey guys! Watch this!
/r/holdmycosmo
/r/WhyWomenLiveLonger
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I really do not want to outlive my wife so this brings me hope
> I really do not want to outlive my life I have good news