Why men in Kazakhstan live shorter lives than women: the gender gap in life expectancy by cause of death, compared with Russia and Central Asia

Abstract

In 2023 women in Kazakhstan lived 8.4 years longer than men, a gap smaller than in Russia (12.4 years) but twice as large as in Uzbekistan (4.1) and two and a half times as large as in Tajikistan (3.3). This study uses World Health Organization Global Health Estimates for 2023 to divide the gap in each of the five countries into the years contributed by each cause of death, and compares the result with the author's hypothesis that men die earlier mainly because of harmful habits and risky behaviour. Heart and circulatory diseases are the largest single block in all five countries, but they contribute almost the same in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan (2.3-2.4 years) and do not explain why the gap differs between them. Injuries follow the size of the gap: 4.0 years in Russia, 1.8 in Kazakhstan, 1.2 in Kyrgyzstan and 0.6-0.7 in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, as do deaths directly caused by alcohol and the male-female difference in heavy drinking, while the male-female difference in smoking does not. Road injuries, the risky behaviour the author named, do not follow the gap. Kazakhstan also shows an unusually large contribution from chronic respiratory disease (1.4 years, against 0.3 or less elsewhere). The results support the part of the hypothesis about alcohol and, partly, about injuries, but not the parts about road behaviour and smoking as explanations of the differences between countries.

Keywords: life expectancy, gender gap, male mortality, causes of death, injuries, alcohol, Kazakhstan, Central Asia

References

1. World Health Organization. Global Health Estimates 2023: deaths by cause, age, sex and country (GHE_FULL). https://www.who.int/data/global-health-estimates (accessed 24.10.2026).
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3. World Health Organization. Global Health Observatory: life expectancy at birth (WHOSIS_000001), age-standardized prevalence of current tobacco smoking (M_Est_smk_curr_std), heavy episodic drinking (SA_0000001739). https://www.who.int/data/gho (accessed 16.10.2026 and 21.10.2026).
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How to cite

Beta High School, Almaty, Kazakhstan Why men in Kazakhstan live shorter lives than women: the gender gap in life expectancy by cause of death, compared with Russia and Central Asia // Central Asian Scientific Journal. – 2026. – No. 4(32), Vol. 2. – Pp. 281–285.