Study: City Life Affects Male Mortality

They don't know why, but researchers say natural causes claim more urban men

What is it about living in a city that make urban life a health risk, particularly for men?

James S. House admits he doesn't know. But the University of Michigan sociologist does report in the current issue of the American Journal of Public Health that men living in cities are 125 percent more likely to die an untimely death from natural causes, such as tumors, than their suburban, rural or small-town counterparts.

House headed a study begun in 1986 in which he and his associates tracked 3,617 adults who were carefully chosen to represent the population and demographics of the United States as a whole.

By 1994, 542 of the 3,617 adults had died.

When House and other researchers at the Survey Research Center at the U-M Institute for Social Research began sorting through the data and accounted for every conceivable risk factor, such as age, health, income and education, they reached a finding that poses interesting questions for men, and particularly white men.

Even when their health at the start of the study was taken into consideration, men in the cities were dying at a much faster rate than their small-town or rural brethren, "whereas for women, we have no evidence there is a markedly greater risk for living in cities," he said.

The results of the study clearly showed up in men age 65 and younger.

"There is something going on connected with living in a city that is risky for (men's) health," he said. "Beyond that...this was not a study to see whether we could tease out what kinds of factors were producing that result."

This article was featured in South Bend Tribune written by Wayne Falda.