Estonian men have lived shorter lives than women for 150 years, study finds
Researcher Mark Gortfelder has traced a long-standing gap between male and female life expectancy in Estonia back 150 years, pointing to both biological and social causes. The gap today is around 10%, nearly three times larger than in Sweden.
A new study by Tallinn University and Estonian Demography Centre researcher Mark Gortfelder has examined why Estonian men have consistently lived shorter lives than women for roughly 150 years, drawing on nationwide sex- and age-specific data stretching back to the late 19th century.
Land, poverty and disease
In the mid and late 1800s, the gap stood at about 10%, widening further during the interwar period. Gortfelder suggests excessive alcohol consumption may have played a role, though no data from that era confirms it. A more documented factor was land scarcity: men were traditionally responsible for providing for their households, and widespread landlessness bred frustration that may have fueled alcoholism. Estonia's interwar land reform only partially eased these pressures. Poor living conditions also spread tuberculosis, which — unlike in industrialized Western nations — hit Estonian men harder due to the country's agrarian economy.
Soviet era and independence
By 1948, the gap had reached nearly 20%, partly reflecting men of military age hiding from Soviet authorities as "forest brothers," whose harsh conditions likely aren't fully captured in official data. After Stalin's death, the Soviet Union largely eliminated infectious disease, but the Eastern Bloc failed to match the West's progress against cardiovascular disease from the mid-1960s onward, widening the gap again. The collapse of socialism and the resulting industrial decline in the 1990s hit male breadwinners particularly hard, pushing the gap to a record 17% in 1995.
Since then, Estonia has made notable progress, outperforming Latvia and Lithuania and far outperforming Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Still, today's roughly 10% gap remains nearly three times larger than Sweden's. Gortfelder attributes the persistence to "path dependence" — cultural and behavioral norms that pass slowly between generations — and says the healthcare system alone cannot close the gap. The findings were published in the journal Historical Life Course Studies.
