> This article misses the elephant in the room (as if how we store fat has any bearing on it, what a joke); men work dangerous jobs.

I doubt it’s relevant. In 2011, there were ~5k fatal work injuries, i.e. 0.2% of the 2,5M deaths in the US that year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_fatality#/media/F...

https://www.infoplease.com/us/mortality/deaths-united-states...

Update: I’m not saying your job has no effect on your lifespan. It does, but mostly because of the (lack of) money you get from it rather than its dangerosity. Job-related deaths are probably too low to be the cause of the men/women lifespan difference.

Life-shortening injuries aren't counted as fatalities, so few fatalities doesn't necessarily negate the argument.

We're talking about life expectancy, not deaths.

Workplace injuries and stress don't kill you, but they make you die faster.

Yes, musculoskeletal injury is very common in manual jobs. But whether it's opiates today or whiskey in the past, the means to combat pain from work related injuries must have a negative effect on lifespan.

Total occupational deaths in first world countries are pretty minuscule as a percentage of total deaths. Only ~4,500 in the entire US vs ~2.5 million total deaths. It seems unlikely that that that would account for much of the discrepancy, even if you assumed it was 100% men.

I was going to mention this, too, since it is potentially one of the bigger factors at play here. Some of the other comments suggest there may be a difference in aging-related lifespan when other factors (e.g. occupational fatality) are corrected for.

I don't know. Even when we account for people who have made it past 65 and 75, there is still a several year gap.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2010/022.pdf

If I work in a coal mine, but don't die due to a cave-in, congrats! I get to live to 65. But my lungs are weak from years of breathing dust and fumes, and during a hot, humid summer, I suffocate and die. 10 years before my wife, who spent most of her years raising our children and volunteering at the church.

This is a stupid made-up story, I know, but my point is that there are so many ways our jobs affect our health. Men do dangerous work, it doesn't have to kill us immediately, but it does take us early.

Not to mention most homeless are men. For some reason it's majority men that work dangerous jobs and also become homeless. For some reason.

I would think getting more/better sleep would contribute too.

this is factual true, why is it downvoted?

Because it's irrelevant. Women live longer than men even if you just count people who died of "natural causes" (old age).

It's not irrelevant, because counting for this variable reduces the gap.

Of course it is not the only or the most important variable here. Do you expect to find one thing that answers for the whole gap? I'm sure you'll say no, but then why do you disregard proven, factual variables that may add up?

I think most people downvote this because it is associated with men's rights movement and other groups.

>Of course it is not the only or the most important variable here. Do you expect to find one thing that answers for the whole gap? I'm sure you'll say no, but then why do you disregard proven, factual variables that may add up?

Because I think the Pareto principle applies here as well. It's not lots of smaller "variables that add up", it's one or two variables that make up for 80% of the difference.

No idea why you are being downvoted...this is true.

I didn't downvote and I think the parent comment is worth exploring. But, the article presents evidence the phenomenon is global; that it is visible in non-accident disease burden (although of course some environmental diseases reflect the pattern of labour); and when the article does engage with potential biological causes it cites preliminary non-human animal data and evidence, and then offers fat distribution as an example of sexual dimorphism, not as the sole, primary, or even necessarily a cause of the mortality gap. So my guess is that anyone downvoting was downvoting the parent comment's flip tone and non-engagement with the article's thesis, not dismissing the possibility that labour markets impact lifespans.

I read the article and am engaging with it. They completely ignore labour; they've missed the forest for the trees. We spend most of our lives working and our labour is a part of our biology.