In the US, the life expectancy for men born is 2023 was 75.8 years for men and 81.1 years for women—a difference of 5.3 years. This “longevity gap,” which was two years in 1900, grew to nearly eight around 1980 before dropping to its current level.

Interestingly, the gap shrinks among older men and women — a 65-year old man in 2023 was expected to live another 18.2 years, and a woman could expect another 20.7 years. Why this smaller gap? More men die before age 65, dragging men’s life expectancy at birth down. Thirty-one percent of men who died in 2023 were below 65, compared to 19% of women.

If you just read this and started contemplating your mortality, I have weird news: The Social Security Administration has what they call a “life expectancy calculator” but what some folks might call a “death clock”. I haven't tried it yet, and I really don't want to, but I probably will anyway.

Posted by USAFacts

22 comments

  2. The dips for the 1918 Flu pandemic compared to COVID really are crazy.

  4. I’m actually encouraged because the gap seems to be slowly closing 🙂

  5. When you correct for the height difference between men and women, this gap almost entirely disappears.

  6. So, maybe this is just me not understanding the methodology of the chart.

    But wouldn’t we expect to see a big drop for the men born in the early 1920s because of WW2, and ditto around 1900?

    Or is this chart meant to represent what someone in 1920 would have thought with the information available to them at the time (which did not include that there would be a war in 20 years)?

  7. Wait, so a Boomer man’s life expectancy at birth was in the 60s?

    What is it now?

  9. Where ya at, feminists?! Don’t you want to talk about disparities in outcomes between women and men?

  10. I take this to mean men are more likely to die earlier in life than women? accidents, suicides, etc.

    it sounds like if you can make it to retirement age as a man the longevity gap is pretty small

  16. The leading cause of death is cardiovascular deaths like stroke, heart attack or clots. I work in emergency medicine and due to better resources, education and training, we rush patients with a stroke or heart attack to get the proper tests and treatment right away. In fact at my hospital, our door to cath lab time has dropped below 30 minutes for the first time. I think we still have ways of improvement for longevity as we realize how important nutrition is to physical and mental health.

  17. Pretty funny how irrelevant a blip COVID was and yet we all panicked and threw ourselves into a global recession over it. Maybe next time we’ll be smarter and keep things in perspective before shutting down the economy and fucking over a generation of children who still haven’t caught up on education.

  18. Women have much better immune systems and are tougher overall.

  19. I always hate life expectancy numbers because they always include infant (and child) mortality, which has plummeted considerably. It’s not like in 1900 large numbers of men were dropping dead at 46 years old compared to today. I would be more interested to see life expectancy for people that make it past age 15

  20. Imagine the shitstorm if the gap was in the other direction. Some groups just like to complain more than others.

  21. smaller bodies live longer, that’s basically it. That’s the reason. Having to eat less food, means you live longer.

  22. I thought women lived longer than men everywhere (haven’t the oldest people in the world usually been women?)

Comments are closed.