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Life Health > Life Insurance

Why Are So Many American Men Dying?

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Medical researchers have taken a formal look at a problem that has been worrying life and annuity issuers for years: the growing life expectancy gap in the U.S. between men and women.

COVID-19 and a surge in drug overdose deaths increased mortality for both men and women between 2019 and 2021, according to a team led by Dr. Brandon Yan of the University of California, San Francisco.

Because those factors hit men harder than women, they widened the gender gap in mortality, the team found.

Between 2010 and 2019, before COVID-19 came along, an increase in the number of drug overdose deaths was already widening the gender gap.

What it means: Medical researchers are confirming what life insurance and annuity actuaries have been saying all along about the gender mortality gap.

For advisors, one takeaway may be that male clients need to think especially carefully about preventive health screenings, life insurance, estate planning and the effect of uncertainty about life expectancy on retirement income planning.

The study: The Yan team started with data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics.

They determined how much 12 common causes of death contributed to changes in the age-adjusted death rates for men and women over time.

The researchers published their work in JAMA Internal Medicine, a journal affiliated with the American Medical Association.

The data: For men, the overall age-adjusted death rate increased to 1,048 deaths per 100,000 men in 2021, from 847 deaths per 100,000 men in 2019.

Deaths per 100,000 men increased by 201, or 24%.

COVID-19 added 131 of the 201 extra deaths per 100,000 men, and the impact of unintentional injuries added 22 of the extra deaths per 100,000 men.

Drug overdoses accounted for most of the increase in the impact of unintentional injuries, the researchers note.

Actuaries and others sometimes describe drug overdose deaths as examples of “deaths of despair” and study them together with deaths resulting from factors such as suicide and homicide.

The death rate for homicide and suicide increased to 36 deaths per 100,000 men in 2021, according to the Yan team’s data, from 32 per 100,000 men in 2012.

Although the homicide and suicide mortality rate  increased by 12%, that increase accounted for just 4 of the 201 extra deaths per 100,000 men that occurred in 2021.

For women, the age-adjusted death rate increased to 733 deaths per 100,000 women in 2021, up 22% from 603 per 100,000 women in 2019.

Age-adjusted mortality was 39.7% higher for men than for women in 2010; 40.5% higher in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic came to light; and 43% higher in 2021.

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