Gender Mortality

Mortality refers to the number of deaths in a population. There are different factors that can bring about death in a population. These factors may include injuries (unintentional, suicide, or homicide), diseases and accidents. The measurements of mortality rates are counted and reported in ratios as the crude death rate (CDR). To calculate the CDR, the number of deaths in a designated population during a given year is divided by the population size. For example, in 2003, the CDR for the USA was 840 per 100,000 population, though this rate varies considerably among age groups, racial and ethnic groups, between males and females. To determine the death rate for a particular group, a Specific Rate (SR) is calculated by confining the number of deaths and the population size to that given segment of the population. i.e. if we are to determine the death rate using genders, we use the gender SR as a segment of the population.
The CDR in the USA is said to have declined general by almost 50 percent since the 1900 and continues to drop each year. It is believed that mortality rates improved for both men and women in the second half of the 20th century. The largest reduction has been for females, both black and white, while the least reduction has been for black males. This difference during most of the 20th century can be attributed primarily to the fact that men smoked more than women. But in the recent decades, the prevalence of smoking among women has increased while the prevalence of among men has declined.
It has been discovered that females have a longer life expectancy than males. At birth, female infants can expect to live about 80 years compared to the male infants whom have been estimated at 74 years. Within racial groups, white females are expected to live 5 years more than the white males counterparts, and black females more than 7 years longer than black male infants. The mortality rates for all three leading causes of death in the USA—heart disease, cancer, and stroke—are higher for men than women and progress against those causes of death has been much slower than against other causes in the last 50 years. This is evident that men at all ages are less likely to seek medical care and less likely to comply with medical instructions than are women.
Females have biological advantage over males from the beginning of life, as demonstrated by lower mortality rates at both the prenatal and neonatal stages of life. However the sizable gap in expected years of life between men and women is traceable to an interrelationship among several factor biological and sociocultural influences.
In conclusion, the mortality rate in the USA has general decreased in both male and female but more in female mostly because of the initiatives they have taken care of themselves in the last decades. The deaths in the USA in the present are mostly associated with chronicle diseases such as diabetes, cancer, stroke, and heart diseases more than injuries.

References:
Population Reference Bureau: “The Gender Gap in U.S. Mortality” http://www.prb.org/template.cfm?section=PRB&template=/contentManagement/content
2006.