About That 5-Year Gender Longevity Gap

What You Need to Know

The gender life expectancy gap may be five years at birth, but it’s a different story for your 65-year-old clients.
The longevity gap between men and women is much less significant within higher-income households.
Financial advisors should consider this shrinking longevity gap when advising clients on retirement and Social Security planning.

A recent report from BlackRock highlights the five-year difference in lifespan between men and women. While the gap between men and women sounds dramatic, advisors should be aware that the gap is much smaller for their retirement-age clients. A narrower gender gap has important planning implications.

The gender life expectancy gap can be as high as five years at birth, but young men are far more likely to die in accidents and have higher rates of mortality from tobacco and alcohol use. Men who survive to age 65 have a life expectancy that is only about 2.5 years shorter than 65-year-old women.

Even a 2.5-year gender longevity gap is too high for financial planning clients. Men in the top 5th percentile of lifetime income have a gap that is only 1.5 years compared to high-income women. The gender gap still exists, but is only a third as large as the gap at birth for all Americans.

Minding the Gap

The gender life expectancy gap has varied over time. According to the Social Security Administration’s 2019 OASDI Trustees Report, which includes past (1940 to 2019) and projected (2019 to 2095) life expectancies, the gap between men and women at birth was less than five years in 1940, but rose as high as eight years during the “Mad Men” era of the 1960s and 1970s, mainly because of higher smoking rates among men. The gap at birth has fallen to about five years and is projected to decline to below four years by 2060.

The life expectancy gap at age 65 is far smaller than 2.5 years for all Americans. While the era of men behaving badly pushed the gap at age 65 up to 4 years in the 1970s, men have made significant gains in retirement longevity in recent decades.

The biggest recent gains in longevity have occurred among higher-income men. Today, higher-income men smoke less, exercise more, eat better and have access to higher-quality health care than lower-income men.

The startling improvement in longevity among higher-income individuals relative to average Americans has been documented by Harvard University’s Health Inequality Project. Using data collected through the project, the gender gap is indeed 4.5 years for the lowest-income Americans but falls with income to about 1.5 years for the highest-income Americans.