Cultural determinants of the gender gap in life expectancy

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  Gender is a matter of life and death, literally.  Women's life expectancy in North America today is about 82 years.  Men's life expectancy is about 75 years.  The gender gap in life expectancy has varied from one historical epoch to the other.  For example,  death of the mother during childbirth was much more frequent in medieval Europe.  Of course,  the evolution of medicine and public health, two eminently cultural phenomena, had a lot to do with this particular change.   The more dangerous occupations of men (construction work,  race car driving, professional boxing,  clear water logging, etc.) and their higher historical incidence of smoking and alcohol and drug consumption are also culturally determined life-shortening phenomena. In several agrarian economies,  because male offspring represent an "old age pension and health plan" all rolled into one,  many a parent has gone out and killed his or her female offspring at birth.  Finally,  male roles (high pressure jobs) are believed by some authors to be more stressful,   enough to be life-threatening -primarily via heart attack.

However, it has been counter-argued that men's much greater propensity toward the vast majority of addictions (narcotics, alcohol, gambling,  risk-taking, sex dependence) is itself partly biologically determined.  About 30% of compulsive gamblers had a hyperactivity-attention deficit disorder as children.  Like aggressive men,  psychopaths and violent criminals, gamblers have low levels of serotonin turnover as indexed by blood assay of an enzyme,  monoamine oxidase,  which catabolizes serotonin.  A study recently reported that the antidepressant drug fluvoxamine,  a serotonin agonist,  significantly helped gamblers overcome their vice.  One study found that a particular allelic configuration (pairing) of a gene favoring synthesis of the D2 dopamine receptor is present more often (by a factor of 25%) in pathological gamblers compared to normal controls.  A similar finding has been reported for drug abusers, men with character disorder, alcoholics,  and  Gilles de la Tourette patients.  Similar findings are now accruing with regard to a mutant gene involved in the D4 dopamine receptor.  Since these genes are autosomal,  one would speculate that the expression of pathological behavior in the presence of these mutant variations of these particular genes might be modulated by sex hormones,  particularly testosterone.   Stress associated with high pressure male-prevalent occupations is certainly a killer via heart disease.  However,  the cultural determination of this phenomenon could be disputed (or rather, relativized) since it is well known and admitted that male mammals are at greater risk for fatal vascular disease,  even independently of stress.  Several studies have led to the conclusion that stress leads to heart disease in men,  but not so much in women.   Men are much more often victims of lethal assault (by men) than are women.  Again however,  there are strong biological factors underlying this basic aggressiveness of men,  which could include  assault-provoking behavior (especially aggressivity) of homicide victims (who are typically other men).  Criminological and autopsy investigations of homicide victims have shown that the great majority of homicide victims have criminal records,  and had consumed alcohol before dying.   One of the things that will have to be analyzed very carefully is whether the things that stress men are really the same as those that stress women.    It is possible that certain stressful life conditions (perhaps single-parenting in association with poverty, smoking and junk food consumption),  but not others, indeed place women at high risk for vascular disease.   Finally,   could not male-typical dangerous occupations also have something to do with biological determination of occupational preferences ?   If boys and men are more turbulent, more physically active,  enjoy muscular exertion more, are more aggressive, are less fearful (all of these comprising some biological determination),  could it not be expected that they would naturally choose more dangerous occupations ?  

What is the importance of cigarette smoking,  food preferences, alcohol consumption,  and occupational choice in determining life expectancy of each sex ?  It is probably not great.    One study investigated 40,000 monks and nuns,  white,  unmarried, native-born American,  non drinking,  non smoking.   The nuns had a 5 and a half year life expectancy advantage over the monks.