ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2018
Women live longer than men even during severe famines and epidemics.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 147 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
147 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- The impact of economic sanctions on health and health systems in low-income and middle-income countries: a systematic review and narrative synthesis.BMJ global health · 2023Pooled it
- Gender and COVID-19 related fear and anxiety: A meta-analysis.Journal of affective disorders · 2022Pooled it
- Experience and perspectives on palliative or end-of-life care of Chinese people and their families as immigrants to high-income countries: a systematic review and thematic synthesis.BMJ global health · 2020Pooled it
- Why Some People Live Past 100: The Role of the Immune System in Centenarians, Semi-Supercentenarians and Supercentenarians.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Review
- Sex differences in excess mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic: a longitudinal ecological analysis of 34 high-income countries.EClinicalMedicine · 2026Article
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- Famine, plague, and slaughters: The fleeing famine hypothesis of anorexia nervosa reconsidered.Psychological review · 2026Article
- Contemporary disasters may not kill more women than men: an empirical inquiry into sex-differentiated fatalities in the twenty-first century.Disasters · 2026Article
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- Sex-Specific Responses to Intermittent Fasting: A Narrative Review Across Physiological, Clinical, and Psychosocial Contexts.Nutrients · 2026Review
- Urban survival, population dynamics and historical transitions in Thessaloniki (316 BC-AD 1500).Archaeological and anthropological sciences · 2026Article
- Female Reproductive Cancers and the Sex Gap in Survival.JAMA network open · 2026Article
- Why do women live longer than men, but spend more time in poor health? A decomposition analysis of the gender gap in unhealthy life years across Europe.European journal of epidemiology · 2026Article
- Sex differences in the global burden of autism spectrum disorders: An analysis based on GBD 2021 data.Zhong nan da xue xue bao. Yi xue ban = Journal of Central South University. Medical sciences · 2026Article
- Article
- Perceived Psychological and Physical Health as Predictors of Mortality and Quality of Life in Patients with Lymphedema: A Prospective Study Spanning Almost Two Decades.International journal of behavioral medicine · 2026Article
- Association of estimated muscle mass and its changes with all-cause mortality: a Chinese population-based cohort study.BMC geriatrics · 2026Article
- Association of atherosclerosis cardiovascular diseases with hearing loss in older people: a cross-sectional age-stratified analyses of 4,441 participants.BMC geriatrics · 2026Article
- RNA variation as the driver of genomic efficiency and phenotypic complexity.International journal of biological sciences · 2026Review
- Global ecological associations between overweight/obesity and non-communicable disease prevalence among children aged 5-9 years: a sex-stratified analysis of 174 countries.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
87 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Abstract
Women in almost all modern populations live longer than men. Research to date provides evidence for both biological and social factors influencing this gender gap. Conditions when both men and women experience extremely high levels of mortality risk are unexplored sources of information. We investigate the survival of both sexes in seven populations under extreme conditions from famines, epidemics, and slavery. Women survived better than men: In all populations, they had lower mortality across almost all ages, and, with the exception of one slave population, they lived longer on average than men. Gender differences in infant mortality contributed the most to the gender gap in life expectancy, indicating that newborn girls were able to survive extreme mortality hazards better than newborn boys. Our results confirm the ubiquity of a female survival advantage even when mortality is extraordinarily high. The hypothesis that the survival advantage of women has fundamental biological underpinnings is supported by the fact that under very harsh conditions females survive better than males even at infant ages when behavioral and social differences may be minimal or favor males. Our findings also indicate that the female advantage differs across environments and is modulated by social factors.
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