3 ms·

> Life expectancy for women in the United States dropped about 10 months, from just under 80 years in 2020 to slightly more than 79 in 2021. Life expectancy for

> Life expectancy for women in the United States dropped about 10 months, from just under 80 years in 2020 to slightly more than 79 in 2021. Life expectancy for men dropped a full year, from about 74 years to 73. We've known that there's a gap in life expectancy between men and women for awhile now. But the surprising thing is that the gap is increasing; you might expect that life expectancy would drop a certain percentage for all groups, leading to the ones with the highest life expectancy getting the largest drop. Perhaps an equity lens is merited here.

watwut 4y ago
I dont think that is reasonable expectation. Some issues affect men more - covid, substance abuse, suicide and general violence belonging in that category.
- scarmig 4y ago
  That's just restating the issue: you're just saying "premature death affects men more." The question is why. It's not some natural state of affairs but something created by social and political choices. For COVID, for example, the risk ratio for men compared to women is larger than the risk ratio for e.g. black people compared to white people. But public health authorities in the US prioritized access to vaccines to racial minorities (who indeed had higher age-adjusted mortality rates than white people), while not doing the same for men. This is an ideological choice, driven by the idea that bad things that happen to men aren't worthy of social concern. More broadly, the gendered death statistics are indicative of systemic inequalities.
  - watwut 4y ago
    You said that "But the surprising thing is that the gap is increasing;" It is not surprising at all, due to excess mortality being in areas that are traditionally more "manly" reasons to die of + covid.
    - scarmig 4y ago
      To restate, then: the status quo is that men die earlier than women, because of certain social and perhaps biological factors. On top of that, there are trends that are increasing premature death rates. What's surprising is that those trends affect men more than women.
  - fellowniusmonk 4y ago
    Wouldn't chromosomal genetic variation have some effect? Which is why xy/male mammals and zw /female birds have greater tendency toward genetic variety? Probably not a huge effect overall though. I would think that real world experiments with babies have shown that babies dressed as baby boys get far less social interaction from strangers which negatively effects early vocabulary and verbal/social engagement/experience/training. Which is tragic, under socialing boys and then mocking them for lack of social skills when they get older.
    - scarmig 4y ago
      It might explain the base life expectancy gap (though see [0]; monks and nuns have a much smaller life expectancy gap, which suggests that social effects are dominating). But that wouldn't explain the trendline of an increasing life expectancy gap. [0] https://paa2012.princeton.edu/papers/122836 https://paa2012.princeton.edu/papers/122836
      - fellowniusmonk 4y ago
        When exposed to mutagens like radiation do women fair better then men? If our DNA environment is getting more hostile would same/same chromosomes be more resilient? Would it make any / a measurable difference?
        scarmig 4y ago
        Interestingly, it appears women are more susceptible to ionizing radiation than men. E.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6509159/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6509159/ This surprised me, because I'd have guessed women would fair better, for reasons similar to you. Though I mostly see population-wide studies and not anything that looks at genetic/chromosomal damage.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    > But public health authorities in the US prioritized access to vaccines to racial minorities (who indeed had higher age-adjusted mortality rates than white people), while not doing the same for men. This is an ideological choice, driven by the idea that bad things that happen to men aren't worthy of social concern. This would only be true if cities were largely sex-segregated, making it as easy both to target or ignore a particular sex as it is to target or ignore black people. Your ideology accusation is unnecessary, as there is a material difference between the specific situations of black people and males. In fact targeting aid towards black people consequently targeted aid toward black males (a subset of black people.) And with that targeting, black people are still less likely to be vaccinated than white people, so black people clearly weren't targeted enough. Although it was nice to see white people having to come in from the suburbs for the first time in years to get a vaccination. It was like what black people in the city have to do to get to their "neighborhood" public school. It was sad that they set up networks to disproportionately take up early slots, though. Take the likelihood of being vaccinated between black people and all males, against the disproportionate effects of covid on males vs women, the cost of specifically targeting men (by giving men a special app or something, or by prioritizing men over women?) vs the cost of specifically targeting black people (put the vaccination centers in or near black neighborhoods if possible.) Control for everything else. I'd bet if you calculated it out, you've saved a lot more person-years per dollar doing the plan they went with instead of your plan. That's not even considering the fact that black people start in a median more precarious position than most other groups (other than maybe Native Americans and undocumented migrants), so between a black and non-black person, the median black person will have their mortality damaged more at the same severity of illness.
    - scarmig 4y ago
      > In fact targeting aid towards black people consequently targeted aid toward black males (a subset of black people.) And decreased aid targeted toward white males (a subset of males.) > black people are still less likely to be vaccinated than white people, so black people clearly weren't targeted enough The same is true of men vs women, so men clearly weren't targeted enough either. Moreover, this entire comment thread is driven by the fact that men died a whole lot more than women due to COVID. That's ipso facto evidence that men were undertargeted. > the cost of specifically targeting black people (put the vaccination centers in or near black neighborhoods if possible.) Prioritizing who has access to a vaccine is cheaper than opening new vaccination centers in underprivileged areas (which fwiw I support). And it went further than this: in most localities, white men were explicitly deprioritized, having to wait a month or more longer to get access to the vaccine compared to e.g. black women, who were at lower risk. Also, by choosing not to apply a gender lens, public health authorities overinvested in black women and underinvested in black men. It's likely that if mens' higher vulnerability to COVID was allowed to be brought into consideration, fewer black people (and fewer people overall) would have died.

watwut 4y ago

I dont think that is reasonable expectation. Some issues affect men more - covid, substance abuse, suicide and general violence belonging in that category.

scarmig 4y ago
That's just restating the issue: you're just saying "premature death affects men more." The question is why. It's not some natural state of affairs but something created by social and political choices. For COVID, for example, the risk ratio for men compared to women is larger than the risk ratio for e.g. black people compared to white people. But public health authorities in the US prioritized access to vaccines to racial minorities (who indeed had higher age-adjusted mortality rates than white people), while not doing the same for men. This is an ideological choice, driven by the idea that bad things that happen to men aren't worthy of social concern. More broadly, the gendered death statistics are indicative of systemic inequalities.
- watwut 4y ago
  You said that "But the surprising thing is that the gap is increasing;" It is not surprising at all, due to excess mortality being in areas that are traditionally more "manly" reasons to die of + covid.
  - scarmig 4y ago
    To restate, then: the status quo is that men die earlier than women, because of certain social and perhaps biological factors. On top of that, there are trends that are increasing premature death rates. What's surprising is that those trends affect men more than women.
- fellowniusmonk 4y ago
  Wouldn't chromosomal genetic variation have some effect? Which is why xy/male mammals and zw /female birds have greater tendency toward genetic variety? Probably not a huge effect overall though. I would think that real world experiments with babies have shown that babies dressed as baby boys get far less social interaction from strangers which negatively effects early vocabulary and verbal/social engagement/experience/training. Which is tragic, under socialing boys and then mocking them for lack of social skills when they get older.
  - scarmig 4y ago
    It might explain the base life expectancy gap (though see [0]; monks and nuns have a much smaller life expectancy gap, which suggests that social effects are dominating). But that wouldn't explain the trendline of an increasing life expectancy gap. [0] https://paa2012.princeton.edu/papers/122836 https://paa2012.princeton.edu/papers/122836
    - fellowniusmonk 4y ago
      When exposed to mutagens like radiation do women fair better then men? If our DNA environment is getting more hostile would same/same chromosomes be more resilient? Would it make any / a measurable difference?
      - scarmig 4y ago
        Interestingly, it appears women are more susceptible to ionizing radiation than men. E.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6509159/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6509159/ This surprised me, because I'd have guessed women would fair better, for reasons similar to you. Though I mostly see population-wide studies and not anything that looks at genetic/chromosomal damage.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  > But public health authorities in the US prioritized access to vaccines to racial minorities (who indeed had higher age-adjusted mortality rates than white people), while not doing the same for men. This is an ideological choice, driven by the idea that bad things that happen to men aren't worthy of social concern. This would only be true if cities were largely sex-segregated, making it as easy both to target or ignore a particular sex as it is to target or ignore black people. Your ideology accusation is unnecessary, as there is a material difference between the specific situations of black people and males. In fact targeting aid towards black people consequently targeted aid toward black males (a subset of black people.) And with that targeting, black people are still less likely to be vaccinated than white people, so black people clearly weren't targeted enough. Although it was nice to see white people having to come in from the suburbs for the first time in years to get a vaccination. It was like what black people in the city have to do to get to their "neighborhood" public school. It was sad that they set up networks to disproportionately take up early slots, though. Take the likelihood of being vaccinated between black people and all males, against the disproportionate effects of covid on males vs women, the cost of specifically targeting men (by giving men a special app or something, or by prioritizing men over women?) vs the cost of specifically targeting black people (put the vaccination centers in or near black neighborhoods if possible.) Control for everything else. I'd bet if you calculated it out, you've saved a lot more person-years per dollar doing the plan they went with instead of your plan. That's not even considering the fact that black people start in a median more precarious position than most other groups (other than maybe Native Americans and undocumented migrants), so between a black and non-black person, the median black person will have their mortality damaged more at the same severity of illness.
  - scarmig 4y ago
    > In fact targeting aid towards black people consequently targeted aid toward black males (a subset of black people.) And decreased aid targeted toward white males (a subset of males.) > black people are still less likely to be vaccinated than white people, so black people clearly weren't targeted enough The same is true of men vs women, so men clearly weren't targeted enough either. Moreover, this entire comment thread is driven by the fact that men died a whole lot more than women due to COVID. That's ipso facto evidence that men were undertargeted. > the cost of specifically targeting black people (put the vaccination centers in or near black neighborhoods if possible.) Prioritizing who has access to a vaccine is cheaper than opening new vaccination centers in underprivileged areas (which fwiw I support). And it went further than this: in most localities, white men were explicitly deprioritized, having to wait a month or more longer to get access to the vaccine compared to e.g. black women, who were at lower risk. Also, by choosing not to apply a gender lens, public health authorities overinvested in black women and underinvested in black men. It's likely that if mens' higher vulnerability to COVID was allowed to be brought into consideration, fewer black people (and fewer people overall) would have died.