Men who face plenty of competition to find a mate have slightly shorter lives than those who don’t.
New research shows that gender imbalance, when men outnumber women, affects male longevity by an average of about three months.
Although the link between gender ratio and longevity has been shown in animals, the study published in the journal Demography is thought to be the first to show the impact in humans.
“If you’re having a hard time finding a mate, it winds up affecting your body and how long you live,” said Nicholas Christakis, of Harvard Medical School.
Three months may not seem like much, he added, but it is comparable to the effects of taking a daily aspirin, or engaging in moderate exercise.
“A 65-year-old man is typically expected to live another 15.4 years. Removing three months from this block of time is significant,” he said.
Christakis and scientists from Northwestern University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Chinese University of Hong Kong found that the more imbalanced the ratio of men to women, the more pronounced the effect was.
The researchers studied data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, which tracked the long-term health of 4,183 men who graduated from Wisconsin high schools in 1957, and information about more than 7 million men enrolled in Medicare, the government medical program for the elderly.
After calculating the gender ratios for each high school class they noticed that 50 years later men from classes with more boys than girls did not live as long as those from more balanced classes.
Although they do not know what could explain the discrepancy, the researchers suspect it is due to social and biological factors, including the stress of finding a partner in a competitive environment.
Australians were downloading virtual private networks (VPNs) in droves, while one of the world’s largest porn distributors said it was blocking users from its platforms as the country yesterday rolled out sweeping online age restriction. Australia in December became the first country to impose a nationwide ban on teenagers using social media. A separate law now requires artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot services to keep certain content — including pornography, extreme violence and self-harm and eating disorder material — from minors or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$34.6 million). The country also joined Britain, France and dozens of US states requiring
Hungarian authorities temporarily detained seven Ukrainian citizens and seized two armored cars carrying tens of millions of euros in cash across Hungary on suspicion of money laundering, officials said on Friday. The Ukrainians were released on Friday, following their detention on Thursday, but Hungarian officials held onto the cash, prompting Ukraine to accuse Hungary’s Russia-friendly government of illegally seizing the money. “We will not tolerate this state banditism,” Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said. The seven detained Ukrainians were employees of the Ukrainian state-owned Oschadbank, who were traveling in the two armored cars that were carrying the money between Austria and
Kosovar President Vjosa Osmani on Friday after dissolving the Kosovar parliament said a snap election should be held as soon as possible to avoid another prolonged political crisis in the Balkan country at a time of global turmoil. Osmani said it is important for Kosovo to wrap up the upcoming election process and form functional institutions for political stability as the war rages in the Middle East. “Precisely because the geopolitical situation is that complex, it is important to finish this electoral process which is coming up,” she said. “It is very hard now to imagine what will happen next.” Kosovo, which declared
MORE BANS: Australia last year required sites to remove accounts held by under-16s, with a few countries pushing for similar action at an EU level and India considering its own ban Indonesia on Friday said it would ban social media access for children under 16, citing threats from online pornography, cyberbullying, online fraud and Internet addiction. “Accounts belonging to children under 16 on high-risk platforms will start to be deactivated, beginning with YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, Bigo Live and Roblox,” Indonesian Minister of Communications and Digital Meutya Hafid said. “The government is stepping in so that parents no longer have to fight alone against the giants of the algorithm. Implementation will begin on March 28, 2026,” she said. The social media ban would be introduced in stages “until all platforms fulfill their
RSS