Life expectancy: the French are catching up French

The gap in life expectancy between men and women in industrialized countries tends to decline over the past twenty years, particularly in France, according to a survey by the National Institute for Demographic Studies.

The life expectancy of French was 82.9 years against 75.9 years for men. The difference is more than seven years against 8.2 years in 1980. This trend is in all industrialized countries studied, with the notable exception of Japan.

The gap in life expectancy between men and women was also down in 2000 in the United States (5.4 years) and Sweden (4.3 years), said INED in its survey: "Hope life: a female advantage threatened? ".

For decades, the risk behavior of men has been put forward to explain the excess mortality compared with women beyond the innate biological advantage of them, estimated at about two years.

The French consume eg more alcohol and tobacco than women and were more often killed in road accidents.

Prevention help, men are more likely to imitate the behavior favorable to health adopted by women, traditionally more attention to their body.

Still according to the INED survey, the decline in smoking among men was also "instrumental in reducing the gap in life expectancy began in 1992."

However, the Institute is an increase in the proportion of regular smokers, which could in the future affect the female mortality rate, "given the long latency period between tobacco intoxication and the development of malignant tumors" .

"Traffic accidents and cancer are responsible for the greatest relative differences in mortality between men and women," says otherwise INED, according to the road remains a major threat to young people. A man of 20 years and three times more likely to die within a year than women of the same age.

Japan is about the only industrialized country in which he studied the difference in life expectancy between men and women continues to grow. It was 6.9 years in 1999, against 5.3 in 1980. To explain this trend, INED put before the growing importance of respiratory diseases at an older age, which hinders the progress of the male life expectancy.

As in France, cancers and cardiovascular disease are the two leading causes of death in Japan. Violent deaths in third place in France, places occupied by respiratory diseases in Japan.

However, the Japanese archipelago remains the country where life expectancy is the highest in the world. Women can expect to live 84.6 years and men to 77.7 years.