Like most doctors, I’m painfully aware that women live longer than men — five years longer, on average. I used to accept the disparity, assuming it was part of our collective genetic inheritance, more nature than nurture. But a new study published in the current issue of the American Journal of Public Health suggests that men’s behavior may also be to blame.
According to David Williams, a senior research scientist at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research and the main author of the study, men outrank women in all of the 15 leading causes of death, except one: Alzheimer’s. Men’s death rates are at least twice as high as women’s for suicide, homicide and cirrhosis of the liver. Men don’t just have more accidents, they are accidents waiting to happen.
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“At every age,” Williams reports, “American males have poorer health and a higher risk of mortality than females.” More of them smoke ; they are twice as likely to be heavy drinkers and far more likely to engage in behaviors that put their health at risk, from abusing drugs to driving without a seat belt.
As if that weren’t enough, men tend to work in more dangerous settings than women, and thus account for 90% of on-the-job fatalities, mostly in agriculture. And men drive more rollover-prone SUVs
