Male Lives Fact Sheet

Health

Life expectancy: Men now die on the average 5.3 years earlier than women.
Males are higher on the major fifteen causes of death.
It is estimated that half of all male deaths could be prevented through changes in lifestyle. Male socialization is regarded as the biggest factor.
Between 5-10% of male adolescents use steroids (approx. 500,000).
Men and boys engage in more than thirty behaviors that increase their risk of disease, injury or death (eg. reckless driving, high-risk physical activities and fighting).
Males are responsible for approximately eight out of ten automobile accidents.
Male adolescents experience 174% more physical injuries than females.

One of ten office visits by adolescent males results in psychotropic medication.
More men than women are diagnosed for psychiatric conditions. Majority of schizophrenics are male. Boys labeled emotionally disturbed outnumber girls four to one.
Boys twice as likely to suffer from autism and six times as likely to be diagnosed with ADD/ADHD.
Emotional inexpressiveness, more common in males, has been linked to a wide variety of negative outcomes including health problems, depression, poor self-esteem and intimacy dysfunction.
Boys admitted to mental hospitals and juvenile institutions seven times more frequently than girls.
Boys are five times as likely as girls to commit suicide.
Males are alcoholic three times more often than females; There are 50% more male drug users; DUI arrests are 88% male. Males make up 84% of drug abusers.

Males enact 90% of all interpersonal violence and commit 90% of all crimes.
Boys are twice as likely as girls to be victims of violence, including at school.
Boys are twice as likely as girls to be victims of physical abuse from caregivers.
Males are 63% more likely to be victims of crime. Murder rates are three and a half times higher for males than females.
Almost as many men are killed at work as were killed on an average day in Vietnam.
Males constitute 93% of all job-related deaths (but 55% of workforce).

Boys comprise 70% of those labeled LD and 80% labeled behaviorally disabled. Nearly 100% of the most seriously disabled are male.
Boys receive 70% of D’s and F’s, 40% A’s. Top 20% achievers are 63% female.
Average eleventh grade boy writes with the proficiency of the average 8th grade girl.
Eighth grade retention 50% more likely to be male. 60% of high school drop-outs are male.
Boys comprise 90% of school discipline problems.
For every fifty girls, forty eight boys graduate from high school, thirty nine enroll in college and thirty seven earn a bachelor’s degree.

(Sources: Gurian, 1996; 2001; Conlin, 2003; Salamone, 2003; Courtenay, 2004; Tyre, 2006)

Life expectancy for women is 80.4 years, 5 years longer than for men.
Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer in women, followed by lung cancer. Lung cancer, however, kills more women every year than any of other cancer. Colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer in women.
Traffic accident deaths were responsible for more than a third of all accidental deaths of women in the U.S. in 2003.
In 2005, 23% of high school girls were current smokers. Approximately 21% of women of all ages in the U.S. smoke. There is evidence that more teen girls than boys are smoking.
Eating disorders affect between 1–5% of young women. 4–20% practice unhealthy dieting, purging, and binge-eating. Up to 10% of women with anorexia nervosa may die due to anorexia-related causes. Risk of death among individuals with anorexia is 12 times greater than their same age peers without anorexia.
Girls who are involved in sports are less likely to consider themselves overweight. In 2000, 27% of female athletes thought they were overweight, compared with 40% of non-athletic girls.
In 2004, there were 75 pregnancies and 40.4 births per 1000 girls aged 15–19. The rate of teen pregnancy has been dropping annually since a high of 117 in 1990.
10% of U.S. girls are diagnosed with asthma, compared with 15% of U.S. boys.

Depression is twice as common and more persistent among women than men.
Females attempt suicide three times as often as males, though men’s lethality is four times that of females.
The rate of suicide in women aged 15–24 has doubled in the last 60 years (for males, the rate has quadrupled).
Approximately 41.6% of women ages 12 or older reported using an illicit drug at some point in their lives.
Approximately 12.1% of females ages 12 and older reported past year use of an illicit drug and 6.1% reported past month use of an illicit drug.
About 41% of 9th grade girls report having had an alcoholic drink in the past month, about the same as 9th grade boys.
Twelve to sixteen year old girls who are current drinkers were four times more likely than their non-drinking peers to suffer depression.

Though men are more likely to be victims of a violent act, women are ten times more likely than men to be he victim of intimate violence. One third of U.S. women report being abused by a husband or boyfriend at some point in their lives.
One in six American women are victims of sexual assault.
Girls aged 16 to 19 are 3.5 times more likely than other groups to be victims of rape, attempted rape or sexual assault.

Approximately 9% of women drop out of high school compared with 12% of men.
Approximately 5% of U.S. girls are diagnosed with a learning disability, compared with 9% of boys.
Females in the U.S. tend to outperform males in tests of reading and writing ability. However, males score higher than females on A.P. tests in these areas as well as on the SAT.
On many tests of mathematics ability, girls and young women score as well as males. However, males still take the AP exams in the sciences and calculus at higher rates than females and have higher average scores.
Women enroll in and complete postsecondary education at rates higher than men. Women, however, are less likely than men to earn degrees in computer science, engineering, and physical sciences.
Women make up the majority of students in graduate school, however they enroll in professional and doctoral programs slightly less often than men. This gap appears to be closing.
Women account for 46% of the U.S. labor force.
Women in the U.S. earn 81% of what men do.
Women accounted for 51% of all workers in the high-paying management, professional, and related occupations.
55% of mothers with infant children are in the labor force.
There are 10 million single mothers in the U.S. with children under the age of 18 living at home.