A new study revealed that the life expectancy for U.S. males had fallen to 73 years, nearly six years shorter than that of women — the widest gap since 1996.
The study, published online in JAMA Internal Medicine on Monday, was jointly conducted by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and Harvard University’s School of Public Health.
The researchers found that the life expectancy of men in the United States dropped from 76.3 years in 2010 to 73.5 years in 2021, while that of women remained relatively stable at 78.1 years in 2010 and 79.1 years in 2021.
For more than a century, women have outlived men in the United States, attributable to lower cardiovascular and lung cancer death rates related largely to differences in smoking behavior.
Life expectancy gap between U.S. men and women is widening over time, driven mainly by the COVID-19 pandemic and the opioid overdose epidemic, the research found.
The pandemic had a disproportionate impact on men, possibly due to differences in health behaviors, social factors, chronic metabolic disorders, mental illness and gun violence, according to the study.
Other factors leading to higher rates of death among men include drug overdose and homicide, which are often linked to economic hardship, depression and stress.
These causes accounted for 80 percent of the differences in life expectancy between men and women in 2021, the study found.
Life expectancy in the United States had fallen from 78.8 years in 2019 to 76.1 years in 2021, which reversed more than two decades of progress, according to the study.
Partially as a consequence of over 1 million COVID-19 deaths, U.S. life expectancy is lower than that of some other developed countries, according to the “Health at a Glance” report published by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) last week.
The report, which compared death rates of OECD members and key emerging economies in 2022, found countries, such as Japan, Portugal, Britain, Germany, and Italy, all had a life expectancy of 80 years or more.
The decline in life expectancy suggested that advancements in medical treatment are no longer sufficient to counter ongoing public health crises, said the researchers.
Their study suggested that the U.S. healthcare system, focused on treating rather than preventing advanced diseases, is failing to address the ongoing public health crises affecting the population.
Source: Xinhua
