0
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: found
      Is Open Access

      Looking for an explanation for the excessive male mortality in England and Wales since the end of the 19th century

      research-article

      Read this article at

      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          Several papers have primarily considered a female disadvantage in mortality as something to explain, considering a male disadvantage to be a “natural condition”. Even if, due to biological reasons, shorter life expectancy among males has been demonstrated, other factors need to be involved to explain firstly the increasing, and then the decreasing, of the male relative disadvantage over the past century.

          The principal aim of this paper is to provide a clearer picture of the major age-class and cause-of-death contributions to male excess mortality in England and Wales from 1881 to 2011.

          Results indicate a clear shift in contributions to the male disadvantage from differences occurring during the first year of life to those occurring in ageing people, and from tuberculosis, respiratory diseases, external causes and perinatal and congenital conditions to neoplasms and circulatory diseases. In contrast, the narrowing of the gap since 1981 seems to be most closely related to the decrease in the male disadvantage in respiratory diseases and to the simultaneous increasing in the female disadvantage in old-age diseases.

          The most important novelty of this research relates to the method: instead of using ratios to investigate gender differences in health, we use decomposition methods.

          Highlights

          • Excess male mortality increased from the 1880s until the 1970s, then declined.

          • Until the 1930s infant mortality was a major part of higher male mortality.

          • Cancer and circulatory disease dominated male excess mortality in the 20 th century.

          • Female disadvantage from dementia and senility contributes to the declining sex gap in mortality.

          Related collections

          Most cited references25

          • Record: found
          • Abstract: found
          • Article: not found

          Gender differences in coronary heart disease.

          Cardiovascular disease develops 7 to 10 years later in women than in men and is still the major cause of death in women. The risk of heart disease in women is often underestimated due to the misperception that females are 'protected' against cardiovascular disease. The under-recognition of heart disease and differences in clinical presentation in women lead to less aggressive treatment strategies and a lower representation of women in clinical trials. Furthermore, self-awareness in women and identification of their cardiovascular risk factors needs more attention, which should result in a better prevention of cardiovascular events. In this review we summarise the major issues that are important in the diagnosis and treatment of coronary heart disease in women. (Neth Heart J 2010;18:598-603.).
            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: not found
            • Article: not found

            The Importance of Social Intervention in Britain's Mortality Decline c.1850–1914: a Re-interpretation of the Role of Public Health

              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: found
              • Article: not found

              Twentieth century surge of excess adult male mortality.

              Using historical data from 1,763 birth cohorts from 1800 to 1935 in 13 developed countries, we show that what is now seen as normal-a large excess of female life expectancy in adulthood-is a demographic phenomenon that emerged among people born in the late 1800s. We show that excess adult male mortality is clearly rooted in specific age groups, 50-70, and that the sex asymmetry emerged in cohorts born after 1880 when male:female mortality ratios increased by as much as 50% from a baseline of about 1.1. Heart disease is the main condition associated with increased excess male mortality for those born after 1900. We further show that smoking-attributable deaths account for about 30% of excess male mortality at ages 50-70 for cohorts born in 1900-1935. However, after accounting for smoking, substantial excess male mortality at ages 50-70 remained, particularly from cardiovascular disease. The greater male vulnerability to cardiovascular conditions emerged with the reduction in infectious mortality and changes in health-related behaviors.
                Bookmark

                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Journal
                SSM Popul Health
                SSM Popul Health
                SSM - Population Health
                Elsevier
                2352-8273
                13 April 2020
                August 2020
                13 April 2020
                : 11
                : 100584
                Affiliations
                [a ]PhD Student at the Magna Græcia University of Catanzaro, Department of Legal, Historical, Economic and Social Science, Viale Europa, 88100, Catanzaro, Italy
                [b ]Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, Department of Geography, Sir William Hardy Building, Downing Place, Cambridge, CB2 3EN, UK
                Author notes
                []Corresponding author. valeriale.maiolo@ 123456gmail.com
                Article
                S2352-8273(19)30304-0 100584
                10.1016/j.ssmph.2020.100584
                7178544
                b2562438-c5f4-44c0-91d1-37e3ca30ed85
                © 2020 The Authors

                This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

                History
                : 14 September 2019
                : 1 April 2020
                : 4 April 2020
                Categories
                Article

                decomposition-analysis,age-cause-specific mortality,excess male mortality,life expectancy,mortality

                Comments

                Comment on this article