It is quite obvious why women live longer..

[silicon toad2000]

My appologies for not being able to find a link.

I read an article some time ago that suggested there was a number of studies that supported the role of iron in the aging process.
Generally due to the monthly cycle, women have lower iron levels than men. The article suggested this had a large part to play in the diferences in the average lifespan of men and women.
I thought it was interesting and took it with a grain of salt.

[LostMyMap]

Originally Posted by SatvikBeri

There are dozens of factors. I don't know if anyone has done a proper analysis to locate the relative effect of each factor-I don't believe so.

Life Insurance companies. They know all this stuff, that's their business. They probably consider their actuarial data proprietary though.

[Ceoarob]

Interesting.

This made me check my Insurance quote software, so I ran some numbers and found this basic fact:

Women pay (slightly) higher premiums for Health Insurance than men.

but Men pay much higher premiums for Life Insurance than women.

[Ceoarob]

Originally Posted by SatvikBeri

There are dozens of factors. I don't know if anyone has done a proper analysis to locate the relative effect of each factor-I don't believe so.

Some examples:
1. As Steve pointed out, stress is worse for life expectancies than smoking. Women tend to manage stress better. It's more okay for a woman to cry, and women tend to have better support networks. In contrast men are less likely to cry or have people help them with their stress.
2. Women tend to engage in less risky/detrimental behavior, such as riding motorcycles or smoking.
3. Women are more likely to visit the doctor than men.

It would be nice if we could get estimates of the effects of each of these factors. Unfortunately most healthy behaviors tend to be correlated.

Ummmm....slightly off with some stuff. I'm going to speak solely from an Life/Health Insurance standpoint. It ultimately correlates to actual life expectancies because alot of the actuaries who derive rates study life expectancy along with how healthy an individual will be over life.

1) Stress? Yeah, we all have it and I'd say that it would definitely affect quality of life and show up in health problems (heart problems, blood pressure, etc), but Insurance carriers rate smoking as a greater cause of earlier death than just stress alone.

While I was running quote software, I found out that smokers easily have to pay anywhere between 150% to 200% the normal premium of a non-smoker.

Why? Lung cancer, respiratory problems, etc. IMO, smoking > stress.

2) Behavior? That has a small factor and I know that certain activities will shoot a premium through a roof or lead to a straight up "declined" for coverage - skydiving, stuntperson, cliffdiving, etc. But I wouldn't say that women engage in more/less risky behavior than men. Rather, I would look into the woman's occupation as a determinant of life expectancy.

EX: A female mill worker would most likely have a lower life expectancy than a female who had a secretarial job or receptionists simply because of environmental hazards.

For Disability Insurance, I know that certain occupations are just downright NOT insured (aviation, stunt work, certain mechanical stuff, anything extremely hazardous), but alot are "rated up".

The rule of thumb is this: The more you use your hands, the more likely you are to suffer an injury and become disabled.

In 2010, with all the new advances in technology, alot of the stuff that used to kill us now just disables us which is why Disability Insurance premiums are a great thing to look at. It's mainly based on occupation and age. Women pay slightly less DI premium (ceteris paribus)

3) More likely to visit doctor than men? Yeah, that's true. As a woman gets older, Health Insurance and even United States Medicare allows for her to get more mammograms. It's not that women are getting "more sick", they just have alot of things that they need to get checked up on - watching out for breast cancer, menopause, Urologist and ob/gyn type stuff, etc.

As men get older, they just end up going to the Urologist (mainly for Viagra - jk), but they don't have as many complicated issues as women do.

--------

That's just my experience of being in the Insurance industry and having access to what underwriters are looking at when the assess potential policyholders.

Cheers.

-AR

[Ceoarob]

Originally Posted by LostMyMap

Life Insurance companies. They know all this stuff, that's their business. They probably consider their actuarial data proprietary though.

For Insurance, it's actually pretty simple.

Here's the most important in order:

-Age?
-Smoker/Non-Smoker?
-Sex?
-Location?
-Currently Insured? (health insurance only)
-Any specific health complications? (for Life Insurance, these will be excluded. Meaning that if you have heart problems, if you die due to heart attack within 12 months of the policy being issued, you get no money. But for Health Insurance, it just makes it go up since you're considered a "greater risk" to the company)

Pretty simple stuff.

Cheers,

-AR

[marinik]

Originally Posted by agsags

The main reason women live longer is that they don't have wives

<ducking>

Smart move!

[Mynder]

Originally Posted by mikej

some do nowadays

That's probably why heart attack rates have gone up for women, too, in the last decade or two.

[JamesKnochel]

Originally Posted by bonbonbelle

I think that women live longer because of the protective effects of estrogen and progesterone on the cardiovascular and nervous systems.

Progesterone is protective, while estrogen is not.

All of the unpleasant consequences of estrogen excess happen to resemble some of the events of aging.

If aging involves the same processes that are created by estrogen, then our knowledge of how to protect ourselves against estrogen can be used to protect ourselves against aging.

Estrogen steals oxygen from mitochondria, shifting patterns of growth and adaptation.

Progesterone can be boosted with things like Gelatin and certain kinds of yams.

hth, hand.

-James

[gullagulla]

I think it is imporatant to look at what population that this data refers to. I doubt this is a reliable world wide statistic. It's most likely a North American statistic based on a small sample size etc. It may be interesting to look at other cultures, with varying cultural practices and health traditions to see if there is a similar tendancy for women to outlive thier male counterparts, or if this is a western tradition. Of course in most parts of the world childbirth, infant mortality, and infectious disease remain top killers, so maybe we should be more worried about that than if mom is gonna have wrinkles or not...

[gingerbaker]

Originally Posted by Lifeisamazing

True, men don't nag much.

What man are YOU living with??

[votoshka]

If men don't nag as much it's cause they don't NEED to... lol... why do women nag? Usually cause the man's not doing what he said he would and she wants to get something done

Trust me, I used to nag all the time when my husband and I would alternate doing the dishes, and then I just thought stuff it and started doing the dishes all by myself cause I got sooo tired of having to nag him to do them and then got upset cause he did a half-arsed job

[CoolBee]

<IMHO - based on what I've seen - no refs >
I think a lot of it might also be to do with mental attitude. All my life I have done night classes, saturday classes and the like, sometimes for qualifications and sometimes just for interest.
The number of older women 60s - 70s you will find in a Saturday class on, say, history or philosophy, far outweighs the number of men.
Go visit a geriatric ward or old people's home - men will be staring into space or drooling on the table, women will be knitting, nattering, reading.
I think a lot of it is because for generations, women were used to occupying themselves, ordering their own lives, Queens of their own Domain, while men spent most of their lives under orders from bosses of one sort or another and found it hard to cope when they retired.
</IMHO>

[richardxthripp]

I think women would naturally die younger because nature basically gives up on them after menopause, but now with hormone replacement they can live longer. Men tend to die young because they don't take care of their bodies and live recklessly. You can't use statistics to predict your own life.

[CoolBee]

Originally Posted by richardxthripp

I think women would naturally die younger because nature basically gives up on them after menopause, but now with hormone replacement they can live longer. Men tend to die young because they don't take care of their bodies and live recklessly. You can't use statistics to predict your own life.

I don't think nature's given up on me yet

[richardxthripp]

Originally Posted by CoolBee

I don't think nature's given up on me yet

Well, I don't know... I would have to know how old you are and your family history.

[Angela]

I think one reason women live longer than men is that nature actually supports women after menopause. The changes that occur tend to have us shifting from a focus on other's well-being to a very distinct and adamant focus on our own -- the "get out of my way! years."

[richardxthripp]

Originally Posted by Angela

I think one reason women live longer than men is that nature actually supports women after menopause. The changes that occur tend to have us shifting from a focus on other's well-being to a very distinct and adamant focus on our own -- the "get out of my way! years."

Yes, but men don't even have menopause... they can have children when they are extremely old, but only to a pre-menopausal woman.

[Angela]

Originally Posted by richardxthripp

Yes, but men don't even have menopause...

Exactly, that's what I'm saying. Menopause is an advantage to women in living longer.

[richardxthripp]

Originally Posted by Angela

Exactly, that's what I'm saying. Menopause is an advantage to women in living longer.

Oh, okay! I guess that's a good way to think about it.