This article misses the elephant in the room (as if how we store fat has any bearing on it, what a joke); men work dangerous jobs.
> 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]
I didn't downvote and I think the parent comment is worth exploring. But, the article presents evidence the phenomenon is global; that it is visible in non-accident disease burden (although of course some environmental diseases reflect the pattern of labour); and when the article does engage with potential biological causes it cites preliminary non-human animal data and evidence, and then offers fat distribution as an example of sexual dimorphism, not as the sole, primary, or even necessarily a cause of the mortality gap. So my guess is that anyone downvoting was downvoting the parent comment's flip tone and non-engagement with the article's thesis, not dismissing the possibility that labour markets impact lifespans.
I read the article and am engaging with it. They completely ignore labour; they've missed the forest for the trees. We spend most of our lives working and our labour is a part of our biology.
It's not irrelevant, because counting for this variable reduces the gap.
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.
>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?
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 was going to mention this, too, since it is potentially one of the bigger factors at play here. Some of the other comments suggest there may be a difference in aging-related lifespan when other factors (e.g. occupational fatality) are corrected for.
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.
Yes, musculoskeletal injury is very common in manual jobs. But whether it's opiates today or whiskey in the past, the means to combat pain from work related injuries must have a negative effect on lifespan.
Total occupational deaths in first world countries are pretty minuscule as a percentage of total deaths. Only ~4,500 in the entire US vs ~2.5 million total deaths. It seems unlikely that that that would account for much of the discrepancy, even if you assumed it was 100% men.
If I work in a coal mine, but don't die due to a cave-in, congrats! I get to live to 65. But my lungs are weak from years of breathing dust and fumes, and during a hot, humid summer, I suffocate and die. 10 years before my wife, who spent most of her years raising our children and volunteering at the church.
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.
Oddly, I have been assuming this question could be answered by sheer size of men versus women. That is, I would expect that if you looked at the life expectancy of people normalized by height/weight, it would erase differences between men/women.
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.
it's more nuanced. I knew a 22-year old black labrador... It probably helped that its owner was putting it on diet restriction and engaged its IGF longevity pathway.
IIRC human height and life expectancy are negatively correlated due to rare FOXO3 gene which makes people's height shorter and life longer, and there is a Simpson Paradox here: in both groups of people with and without this gene longer height its correlated with longer life.
That would account for why men used to have longer lifespans than women. Doesn't seem to give any indicator for the opposite, though. Right?
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.
It could well be, although if the situation was reversed and oestrogen was a suspect I think a worldwide state of emergency would be declared until a solution was found.
The whole "life expectancy" calculation which takes into account infant mortality, death by accident, death by childbirth, death by violence, etc., seems to cloud the issue that most people are more interested in, which is "death by aging".
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.
"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."
A man will generally have more body fat than their female counterpart hence men will not feel the "cold" as easily. I'm not sure that having more body fat than women is a good indication of a higher metabolism.
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.
After doing a bit research it does seem to be wrong however not entirely wrong. Body fat for women is also more concentrated in certain areas compared to men which would at least go towards explaining some of the reasons why women feel the cold more easily.
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.
Women have easier lives than men. 99% of lower paying dangerous jobs are done by men. 99% of homeless people are men. The glass floor is just as significant as the glass ceiling for women.
It's always an option for a woman to get married and live a life being supported by someone.
Hence, less stress and less danger.
I'm sure there's other biological reasons but I think statistically over large populations that's probably why.
the numbers are obviously hyperbole but the distribution is certainly skewed towards men having the share of "dangerous" jobs.. whether or not there are enough dangerous jobs to effect species-wide life expectancy questions is a different question
His stats are clearly wrong, but he's on the right track -- all he's talking about is occupational fatality, which was mentioned in another comment and does account for some of the difference in life expectancy.
In colloquial English, a claim for "99% of <x>" is almost never intended to be read literally. Usage of this construction is widespread and well understood by 99% of the people reading this.
Interestingly, this chart shows that while the female advantage exists everywhere, the cross-country differences are large. In Russia women live 10 years longer than men, in Bhutan the difference is less than half a year.
I'm not sure why this was flagged -- your statistics may be completely wrong, indicating you did no research, but your point remains true[0]. I don't think politics belongs on HN, but that's clearly why you are being downvoted.
It was flagged likely because it came off as rancorous and provided incorrect statistics. It would have been better if he supported his claims with stronger arguments. Hopefully someone else can write a post which investigates this trend without the hyperbole.
Thany you for the link.
The stats I provided were just an estimate. Apparently the real numbers are 93% of men in occupational deaths.
I wasnt far off.
I imagine Im not too far off with the homelessness stat either.
Is that health awareness and adherence learned behaviour though? Men have precisely zero need for healthcare until something goes wrong, but women have various screening programmes as well as contraceptive and maternity/children needs, among other things. This keeps them in regular contact with the healthcare system - where they can be offered unrelated services and advice - throughout their lives.
> 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
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.
> 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?
I know I'm just one data point, but everywhere I look, family, friends, women live healthier than men. My father smokes 3 packs a day, drinks, eats at night etc.
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.
Men are, on the whole, also provided much less social support and education in handling negative emotions. So it would be understandable that they would perform more extreme forms of self-medication.
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.
It will be interesting to see the differences as the various cohorts of women currently in workforce age. A lot of 25yo women are hard drinking, hard living just like particular men in similar occupations.
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.
How can we have a productive discussion about why women live longer than men when the most common cause of death before old age in men is suicide?
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.
72 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 129 ms ] thread> 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]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_fatality
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.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2010/022.pdf
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...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22582890
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.
”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“
dabumtss
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...
[2]https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2010/022.pdf
I'm sure there's other biological reasons but I think statistically over large populations that's probably why.
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...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_fatality
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.
> 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?
also women are more responsible regarding their health and prevention than men
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.
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.