Women live longer, men healthier

A new study has suggested that though women live longer, men live healthier.

The King’s College London study found that, whilst women were far more likely to reach 100 years than men, males tended to be healthier and had fewer diagnosed chronic illnesses compared to women.

The study suggested a 50 per cent increase in the number of females reaching the age of 100 years between 1990 and 2013 and that women were four times more likely to reach age 100 than men. There was also a 30 per cent increase in the number of males reaching 100 during the same period.

Whilst far fewer men reached the age of 100, those that did tended to be healthier, with women more likely to experience multiple chronic illnesses and disabilities such as fractures, incontinence and hearing / visual deterioration than men.

Less life-threatening conditions such as arthritis and other musculoskeletal diseases were also shown to be more prevalent than the more serious illnesses such as diabetes and cancer across both men and women in the sample.

The increase in the overall number of centenarians and conditions associated with reaching this age suggest that the utilisation of health care services by the elderly may increase substantially and could also have an impact on the associated health care costs.

Lead author Nisha Hazra said that as the number of people living to 100 continues to increase, it’s very important to understand the evolving health care needs of the oldest old as this will help to accurately project health care costs associated with the ageing population.

The study is published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.