The gender gap in life expectancy in the United States has widened, with women now living nearly six years longer than men, researchers have found.
Such findings were part of the research letter Gender Gap in Life Expectancy in the US, 2010-2021, published on JAMMA Network on Nov. 13.
The researchers found that men in the United States in 2021 had an average life expectancy of 73.2 years, while for women, it was 79.1 years.
“[The] gap between women and men widened to 5.8 years, its largest since 1996 and an increase from a low of 4.8 years in 2010,” the letter said.
“For more than a century, US women have outlived US men, attributable to lower cardiovascular and lung cancer death rates related largely to differences in smoking behavior,” it added.
The study said it looked at how COVID-19 and other underlying causes of death widened the gender life expectancy gap from 2010 to 2021.
The study said that the average life expectancy for both sexes in 2019 in the United States was 78.8 years, which dropped to 76.1 years in 2022. This puts the United States behind Japan, Korea, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and Italy, which reported average life expectancies of 80 years or more.
“Across the world, women tend to live longer than men,” lead author Brandon Yan, told Statnews. Dr. Yan is a physician at the UCSF School of Medicine and a researcher at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Both institutions collaborated in the research.
Dr. Yan said that factors such as genetics and men’s higher vulnerability to chronic disease cannot account for the 6-year gap in life expectancy compared to women.
“The opioid epidemic, mental health, and chronic metabolic disease are certainly front and center in the data that we see here, explaining why there’s this widening life expectancy gap by gender, as well as the overall drop in life expectancy,” Dr. Yan said.
Men have higher mortality rates for all three conditions compared to women.
“A lot of these drivers of worsening life expectancy, in particular for men, are preventable causes of death,” he added.
The study said that in the years leading to 2010, aggressive anti-smoking campaigns played a role in decreasing the gender gap in life expectancy, as there was a reduction in deaths from respiratory illnesses and cancer, usually attributed to smoking. Women tend to have healthier attitudes regarding smoking compared to men.
Effects of Opioid Epidemic
The opioid epidemic, in particular, was mentioned in the research.
The opioid epidemic claimed the lives of 80,411 Americans in 2021, with most of them being men—an estimated 60,000 being male.
Opioid overdose deaths rose from 21,089 in 2010 to 47,600 in 2017 and remained steady through 2019. This was followed by a significant increase in 2020 with 68,630, culminating in 2021’s figure of 80,411, according to the CDC.
Drugstores such as Walgreens and CVS have paid $10.7 billion in court settlements in opioid lawsuits in recent years after being found guilty of fuelling the crisis by allowing red-flag orders. Pharmaceutical companies that produce addictive opioid drugs have also been implicated.
Meanwhile, fentanyl-laced counterfeit pills bought online and fentanyl smuggled into the United States have been major contributors to the loss of human life in America. In fiscal year 2023, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) seized 27,000 pounds of the drug, enough for more than 6 billion potentially lethal doses and more than an 83 percent spike from the previous year.
Failures in Preventative Care
Preventative care failures were also highlighted in the report, which can be seen in many aspects, from a lack of healthy life choices and healthy eating to the opioid epidemic.
“We have a health care system that is very advanced in treating illnesses and advanced disease. But for the most part … it is not very good when it comes to preventative care,” Dr. Yan said.
He said that cultural norms might also affect men differently, for example, avoiding screening tests and seeking medical help in cases of mental illness or opioid addiction.
“There’s a substantial socio-cultural norms component to this data, as well in terms of the ways that society views masculinity and the way that men ought to behave,” Dr. Yan said. “That has profound effects on care-seeking behaviors.”
The study did not provide insights into racial and ethnic differences, even though opioid deaths among black Americans are much higher compared to other groups.
In 2022, the life expectancy for black American men was 61.5—nearly eight years less than for black American women.