Since the pandemic, life expectancy for men in the U.S. has been declining, which has contributed to a six-year difference in life expectancy between men and women.
Women have been outliving men for a century. That in itself is not as exceptional as the speed with which men’s life expectancy in the US dropped. In 2010, women were projected to live 4.8 years longer than men. Today, that difference has increased to 5.8 years, which is the largest increase in difference since 1996, according to a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine, led by UC, San Francisco School of Medicine’s Brandon Yan, and Alan C. Geller of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Their study and various others attribute women’s relative longevity to several factors. From differences in smoking and drinking habits, substance abuse, firearm violence, and unintentional injuries such as car accidents to a more robust immune system.
Today, the decrease in life expectancy for males can be attributed to different factors. During the pandemic, men were more susceptible to the virus because they were more exposed to it than women were. Compounded with their relatively weaker immune systems, fatalities from the virus were higher for men than they were for women. Additionally, Deaths of Despair –from suicide, substance abuse disorders, alcoholic liver disease, stress, and depression– occur at a higher rate among men than women. Of course, a multitude of societal aspects can be used to explain why men are the primary victims of these epidemics, from job expectations to masculinity norms that expect men to endure pain rather than complaining that leads to diagnosis, thus having fewer chances of recovery.
As for why these deaths affect life expectancy so dramatically, Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota, explains that “deaths at a younger age have an exaggerated effect on life expectancy calculations.” Because people who die from an opioid overdose should still have years of life left. “That’s why each of those deaths can really affect the population lifespan or life expectancy in a meaningful way, more so than for causes of death that tend to kill people at much older ages.”
Other researchers are concerned that men’s decline in life expectancy, from 78.8 years in 2019 to 76.1 years in 2021 –a mere two years– is “concerning in and of itself.” Yan says the changes over such a short period come down to increasing rates of chronic disease, burden among men, and a worsening health crisis. Socioeconomic factors like relatively higher homelessness, illiteracy, and under-education and incarceration rates are also trends that decrease the male lifespan. Philip Cohen, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland who was not involved in the study, highlights the importance of the JAMA report for “underscoring some underlying public health problems that also disproportionately affect men, especially drug overdoses, suicide, and other violence.” Between 2010 and 2019, all these unintentional injuries accounted for 0.23 years of the increasing age gap.
This has experts contemplating ways to amend these societal plagues. Yan believes that “future research ought to help focus public health interventions towards helping reverse this decline in life expectancy.” Researchers believe that men could benefit from additional mental health and substance abuse care. But they are also concerned about men accepting measures to protect them from untimely deaths. For instance, Donald Miller, an epidemiologist at the Boston University School of Public Health, says persuading more older men to get vaccinations would improve the life expectancy trend. But, he adds, “the bigger challenge is younger men.” Of course, unless men are willing to accept help, all efforts are futile.
This report has brought some worrisome trends to light, but now that people are aware of this fact, much can be done to reverse this trend. From improved healthcare and emotional support to a change in mindset, there is a vast range of innovative ideas that can reduce this gap and potentially increase life expectancy for both men and women. That means we need to change both as individuals and as a society. These findings may seem daunting, but they are not insurmountable.
