Saturday, April 18, 2009

Who would want to be a Russian man?

The life expectancy of a Russian man is just 59 years. Moreover, it is significantly lower than the average for the world as a whole.

It must be all that vodka, fags and lard, which seems to be the typical diet of a Russian man. The life expectancy gender gap is just shocking. On average, Russian women live almost 14 years longer than their male counterparts.

UK men seem to do reasonably well from this life expectancy table. It has the lowest gender gap; just 4.4 years. UK men also live longer than their US, German, Russian and French counterparts. They live almost as long as Italian men.

Women in the UK do less well. Their lives are shorter than their sisters in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan.

Nothing new there, eh!

(PS: A reader - Chris - suggested this article from World affairs which neatly covers the Russian demographic crisis.)

5 comments:

  1. I would like to point your attention a World Affairs Journal article called Drunken Nation: Russia’s Depopulation Bomb for more information and analysis on this.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I would say that alcohol is the culprit for the Russian male. Westerners can't possibly understand the impact of the economic change in Russia on the 35 to 50 year old male. Too old for the new system, too young to participate meaningfully in the old system. They are simply left behind. It's really sad.

    Also suprised at how high UK was in both genders. Lots of frozen foods and chips can't be good long term. Perhaps that diet has yet to reveal it's full consequences on the UK life expectancy.

    Thank you for the excellent blog content Alice. I find it highly entertaining and also sobering.

    Cheers

    ReplyDelete
  3. I think the point about the UK's current life expectancy is that these people were born 79 years ago, when diets and lifestyles were much healthier. The current generation isn't going to live that long, the combination of poor diet and lack of exercise will see life expectancy crashing in a decade or two.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I'm struck by how similar Russian and British males are in their humour and thinking - the gap in longevity is surprising.

    I'm sure that general malaise shortens the life span - there's more for a man to live for here... at least there has been thus far.

    Women are more resiliant because their egos aren't tied up in job status nearly half as much.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Alcohol is killing the nation -true. No wonder why so many Russian women want to find partner abroad. It became difficult to find a man to have healthy babies with.

    ReplyDelete