![]() “This is evident in the higher mortality rates among men working in physically demanding jobs with limited healthcare access. ![]() Lower socioeconomic status is often associated with limited access to quality healthcare services, leading to reduced life expectancy,” Fernandez told Medical News Today. “It’s important to consider the role played by social determinants of health, such as income, educations, and occupation. Socioeconomic status plays a major role with health in general and this was especially true during the peaks of the pandemic. “I’ve observed that men’s health often takes a backseat due to societal pressures and perceptions.” Kelvin Fernandez, a resident physician at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center in New Jersey who was not involved in the study. “The COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly brought attention to the existing health inequities in our society,” explained Dr. “But certainly, taking additional measures to avoid COVID infection and serious illness would narrow the gap.”īut understanding why men are more likely than women to die from COVID-19 is a little more complicated. “It is unclear the extent to which this was due to immunologic differences, vaccination rates, mask wearing, environmental exposure, or underlying medical conditions,” said Cutler. One of the simplest reasons for the widening life expectancy gap since the pandemic is, on the surface, pretty straightforward: men were more likely to die from COVID-19. The impact of COVID-19 on life expectancy This proactive approach to health may contribute to early detection of diseases and better management of health conditions to avoid premature illness and death.” “They often visit healthcare professionals regularly, adhere to medical advice, and participate in preventive healthcare measures. “Women are generally more likely to engage in health-seeking behaviors,” Cutler explained. To add to this, men are less likely to seek medical intervention. “While the biological factors like estrogen, the female immune system, and other genetic factors cannot be easily adapted by men, many of the behavior differences could add years to the lives of men,” said Cutler, who was not involved in the study.Ĭutler pointed out that, in general, men are more likely to engage in risky behaviors such as smoking, excessive drinking, and participating in dangerous sports or occupations. David Cutler, a family medicine physician at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in California, told Medical News Today that while some of the effect is biological, much of it is behavioral. There isn’t a single answer that explains conclusively why women outlive men, but a multitude of factors help shed some light on the disparity.ĭr. “The cause of the widening disparity is multifactorial, which is to say we are dealing with multiple epidemics at once – COVID-19, drug overdose, and mental illness,” he said. This time around, however, the explanation isn’t as straightforward. Yan noted that the life expectancy gap grew for much of the 20 th century primarily due to the fact that men were more likely than women to be smokers. “We were also very concerned to see drug overdose deaths continue to rise and increasingly so for men over the course of the pandemic,” he said. ![]() Yan told Medical News Today that while this drop was expected, he and his colleagues were surprised by the disparity between men and women. The COVID-19 pandemic struck immediately after this rise in life expectancy, which predictably caused life expectancy to lower once again. “But then overall life expectancy started to improve again in 20.” Brandon Yan, a study author and resident physician at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine and a research collaborator at the Harvard T.H. for this reason from 2015 to 2017,” said Dr. “We expected to see life expectancy worsen due to the opioid epidemic because life expectancy had previously fallen in the U.S. The study authors also noted that overall life expectancy has fallen by more 2 years on average since 2021. The widening age gap is just one demographic trend affected by the pandemic.
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