The secret of why women outlive men is out.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: Women live longer than men. It’s “a given,” acknowledges Hiram Beltran-Sanchez.
However, the University of Wisconsin Madison demographer wanted to find out if that was always the case, so he delved deep into theHuman Mortality Database to determine causes of death in North America and Europe from 1800 to 1935.
He found that in the 1800s, the life expectancy of men and women was essentially the same, once you factored out deaths from war and other youthful male over-exuberance.
“That was exciting to see,†Beltran-Sanchez told the Los Angeles Times.
But once antibiotics, safer water and more nutritious food became available, the odds of dying in any given year between the ages of 40 and 90 fell by 0.29% for women, compared with 0.17% for men.
This gender imbalance, which Beltran-Sanchez refers to as “excess male mortality,†was also caused primarily by cardiovascular disease and smoking-related deaths. In the first part of the twentieth century, smoking was much more prevalent among men than women, Beltran-Sanchez commented.
By observing at data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the team saw that the gender gap in life expectancy really opened up when people started eating more animal fats at the end of the nineteenth century.
A high-fat diet may do more damage to men than to women because dietary fat is more likely to make men gain unhealthy weight and to clog their arteries, researchers said, according to the L.A. Times.
The study indicates the difference in life expectancy between men and women is not due to biological factors alone, Beltran-Sanchez said.
“If this is something that has been triggered by lifestyle, or diet, we could potentially ameliorate it or diminish it,†he remarked.