Scientists from the University of Southern Denmark have found that men, especially those who are married and with advanced degrees, have a high chance of outliving women. Research results, published in BMJ Open, refute the opinion that the strong half of humanity has a shorter life expectancy due to internal biological reasons.
In their work, experts studied data on the life expectancy of men and women in 199 populations on all continents over a period of 200 years, from 1751 to 2020. To do this, scientists had to turn to various sex mortality tables for individual years and data from mortality tables from the World Population Prospects 2019 report.
It has been found that since 1850 the probability that men will live longer than women has been between 25 and 50 percent at all times and in all populations, only sometimes exceeding 50 percent in different countries at different times (Iceland, Jordan, Iran , Iraq, Bangladesh, India, Maldives and Bhutan).
The results suggest that over the past 200 years, one to two out of every four men have outlived women. This goes against the popular belief that men have a shorter life expectancy.
Researchers suggest that certain external factors play a key role. So, it turned out that in the period from 2015 to 2019, the probability that men outlive women was 40 percent for the entire US population, but the indicator varied from what marital status people had and what level of education they had. They found that men were 39 percent more likely to outlive women if the men were married and 43 percent more likely to outlive the women.
Also, scientists came to the conclusion that married men with higher education live longer than unmarried women with secondary education. It is emphasized that couples have an impact on each other’s health, and men benefit more from stable relationships than women. The lower life expectancy may be due to the increased risk of accidents and violence between the ages of 20 and 30 and the abuse of alcohol and cigarettes.
Previously, scientists called the maximum possible life expectancy of a person.
