The phrase “Why women live longer than men” has become a popular social media caption for videos featuring risky stunts. However, researchers suggest that the actual reason for the widening gap in life expectancy between genders is far more serious. According to a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine, COVID-19 and drug overdoses were the primary factors responsible for expanding the life expectancy gap to nearly six years in 2021, marking the largest difference since 1996, as reported by UPI. Dr. Brandon Yan, the lead author, highlights that the gap had narrowed to 4.8 years in 2010 but has been steadily increasing since then. The study revealed that women’s life expectancy in 2021 was 79.3 years, whereas men had a life expectancy of 73.5 years.
Dr. Yan, a resident physician at the University of California, San Francisco, expressed his unease at the findings, telling the New York Times that it was unsettling to see. The study revealed that men are twice as likely as women to die from opioid overdoses and are also at a higher risk of death from homicide or suicide. Additionally, almost 40% of the life expectancy gap was attributed to the higher COVID death rates among men. While biological differences such as immune responses played a role, the New York Times notes that men are also more likely to work in high-risk exposure industries like construction, with lower vaccination rates compared to women.
Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, a sociology professor at the University of Minnesota, added to the discussion in Scientific American, emphasizing the exaggerated effect on life expectancy when individuals die at younger ages. She pointed out that many victims of opioid overdoses had decades of life ahead of them. Dr. Yan stressed the importance of identifying groups that are particularly affected by the declining life expectancy to focus interventions on those groups. He also highlighted that the life expectancy gap between men and women widened during the 20th century due to higher smoking rates among men, which had been decreasing until 2010. However, overall US life expectancy had declined for two consecutive years in 2021.
