Career Loving Women Live Less Longer than Men: Study

It is a known fact that women live longer than men as they are relatively less vulnerable to life-threatening conditions like heart diseases. But, the lifestyle habits of a modern working woman are diminishing her life-span, suggests a new study.

A research by the Office of National Statistic (ONS) in the U.K. looked at over 50 published data to assess the reasons behind decreasing life expectancy in men. Many past scientific analysis hold premature death and diseases in men are directly associated to drastic lifestyle changes, work environment, employment in dangerous industries like mining and manufacturing of heavy goods and habits like smoking and drinking. The experts compared death rates in both males and females in the last half of the century and noted a sudden shift in number of men who have died.

The findings revealed over the years, men were becoming healthier than women, who on the other hand were exposed to too much stress , work pressure, smoking and drinking. But, the overall mortality rates in both men and women showed significant reduction due to improvements like better treatment for heart diseases, stroke and introduction of statins.  In addition, the researchers observed total life span of men rose by another 15 years while, for women it remained the same.

"The general narrowing of the gap between male and female mortality rates can be explained by a number of reasons including improvements in male health leading to a rise in male life expectancy which has increased at a greater rate than for females. Increases in women entering the labour force over the last 50 years are considered to have had an impact on levels of stress, smoking and drinking, leading to changes in the health of females," write the authors in the study, reports the Telegraph.

Also, the results showed men mostly benefited by giving up smoking and other habits than women. According to the data, during the 1970's and 80's about 44 percent of men and  26 percent of women aged above 60 smoked cigarettes. In the current times, 13 percent of men and women of the same age group consume tobacco-based products.

"Government policies that have put pressure on women to work, whether they want to or not, may not have been entirely a good thing. We may be looking at the unintended consequences of the economic pressure on women to go out to work throughout their lives," said Patricia Morgan, researcher and study author, reports the Daily Mail.