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MEDIA CENTER Women's Cigarette Use Lowers Life Expectancy Advantage Over Men NEW YORK (12 June 2002) — In recent decades U.S. women have experienced an unfortunate gain in their quest for equal status with men—they have narrowed the longevity gap between themselves and men in levels of life expectancy. Because women have enjoyed a growing advantage over men in life expectancy through most of the past century, this development represents a major change. The reason, according to a new study, is not equal rights or improved social or economic status, but something more ominous: cigarette smoking. In the latest issue of Population and Development Review sociologist Fred C. Pampel analyzed trends in cigarette use, lung cancer, and related causes of death to determine how smoking contributes to male and female mortality in high-income Western countries. For most of the past century, he notes, U.S. women have outlived men. Several factors—biological makeup and social behaviors such as concern with health, networks of family, friends, and co-workers, and avoidance of risky lifestyles—give women advantages over men in longevity. "More recently, however, the female longevity advantage has fallen because of adoption of smoking by large numbers of women," Pampel says. In the United States, smoking among men rose in the twentieth century and remained high until the mid-1960s—about the time of the 1964 Surgeon General's report on the health risks of smoking. Female smoking during these same decades lagged well behind. In 1965, 52 percent of men smoked, compared to 34 percent of women. Given that the harm inflicted by cigarette use accumulates for several decades before causing death, these differences were reflected in mortality statistics of the 1990s. For example, lung cancer rates among men in the United States rose until the early 1990s, when they reached a level 2.43 times higher than female rates. By 1998, male smoking had declined to 26 percent, while female smoking had declined to 22 percent. The narrowing of the gap to 4 percentage points indicates a major shift from the mid-1960s. Although men adopted smoking in large numbers earlier than women, they have more recently reduced smoking faster than women. Consistent with the trends in cigarette use, the most recent data show declining lung cancer rates among men in the United States since 1990, while lung cancer rates among women continued to rise. The ratio of male lung cancer rates to female lung cancer rates has consequently fallen from 2.43 to 2.04 between 1990 and 1996. Similar changes have occurred for other smoking-related causes of death. Just as high smoking among men relative to women contributed heavily to the growing sex differential in decades past, the narrowing of the ratio more recently may be contributing to the narrowing of the differential, Pampel concludes. Fred C. Pampel is Professor of Sociology and Research Associate, Population Program, University of Colorado, Boulder. Population and Development Review, Vol. 28 No. 1, March 2002, also includes Notes and Commentary, Data and Perspectives, Archives, Book Reviews, and Documents.
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