Partly due to higher rates of smoking and heart disease in men, although the gap varies between countries, according to a new research published in the Journal of the Canadian Medical Association, suggests that men over 50 years of age are 60 % more likely to die compared to women. The data included more than 179,000 people in 28 countries.
The study examined different socioeconomic (education, wealth), lifestyle (smoking, alcohol consumption), health (heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and depression) and social (spouse, living alone) factors that could contribute to the mortality gap. between men and women.
Gender rather than sexual factors
The reasons for this gap are biological, because they take place in countries with different lifestyles and cultures, but they also have a social, gender factor, because these discrepancies are greater or lesser depending on the country studied. As explained Yu Tzu Wu, from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience. King's College London:
The effects of sex on mortality must include not only physiological variation between men and women, but also the social construction of gender, which differs between societies. In particular, the large variation between countries may imply a greater effect of gender than of sex. Although the biology of the sexes is consistent across populations, variation in cultural, social, and historical contexts can lead to different life experiences of men and women and variations in the mortality gap.
The researchers recommend that public health policies take into account differences based on sex and gender and the influence of social and cultural factors on health.
Furthermore, in countries like the United States, deaths of despair (Deaths of despair), those caused basically by suicide or drug and alcohol abuse, are increasing in non-Hispanic whites, but they are decreasing in non-Hispanic whites with university education, as well as the rest of the population segments (whether university educated or not).
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The news
Mortality gap: the risk of death of men is 60 % higher than that of women according to this study in 28 countries
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Xataka Science
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Sergio Parra
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