People around the world are, on the whole, living longer. At the same time, the gap between how long men and women live is decreasing, new research shows.
The study of more than 190 countries identified these trends around the world. Zooming in on the cluster of countries with the best outcomes — including North America, Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand — females had an average life expectancy of 77.17 years old in 1990, while males had a life expectancy of 72.23. In 2010, those life expectancies rose to 83.10 in females and 78.37 in males. So the life-span gap slightly narrowed, by about 0.2 years.
The life span gap between the sexes has narrowed because male life spans are now lengthening at a faster rate than female life spans are, said study first author David Atance, a professor of economics and business management at the University of Alcalá in Spain. "The pace of mortality declines — or, in other words, the pace of increase in longevity — among women has been slowed," he told Live Science in an email.
"This study is consistent with epidemiologic trends that would suggest a rise in global life expectancy and a narrowing of the gender gap over time," Dr. Brandon Yan, a physician at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine who wasn't involved in the work, told Live Science via email.
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For the new global study, published Wednesday (Jan. 17) in the journal PLOS One, researchers tracked trends in death rates in different countries and determined which places showed the same tendencies over time, Atance told Live Science.
These indicators included citizens' average life expectancy at birth and at age 65, as well as the modal age at death, or the overall number of deaths that occur among people at specific ages. These data lumped the countries into five clusters, or "convergence clubs," which largely correlated with five continents.
"The countries within each convergence group are becoming more and more similar because they present more similar mortality longevity indicators," Atance said. And based on the team's analyses, there are fewer differences among countries in each cluster as time goes on, he added.
Since the 2000s, data has suggested that the male-female longevity gap is narrowing — the new study confirms this and also suggests the gap will continue to narrow, Atance said. The team was able to conclude this by leveraging the existing data to make predictions about patterns in the future. They predicted that the decreases in the life-span gap and the overall increase in life expectancy would continue in 2030.
Despite these trends, women still have longer life expectancies than men, on average. "And, as the projections show, it is possible that this difference, even if it shortens, will be maintained in the future," Atance said.
This is partly because, with age, many males lose the Y chromosomes in a portion of their cells. This chromosome loss is linked to age-related disease and death, and it was cited by the researchers as one possible reason men tend to die younger than women, Atance noted.
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