IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/jopoec/v38y2025i4d10.1007_s00148-025-01124-0.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Male excess mortality during the epidemiological transition: theory and evidence from India

Author

Listed:
  • Astrid Krenz

    (Canada Blanch Centre & Data Science Institute
    Ruhr University Bochum)

  • Holger Strulik

    (University of Goettingen)

Abstract

At any given age, adult men die at a higher rate than women. In many developed countries, increasing excess mortality of men has been demonstrated for cohorts born in the late nineteenth century and thereafter. The decline in infectious diseases is believed to have contributed to the increase in male excess mortality. Here, we focus on India during 1990–2019, a period in which the Indian states experienced, to varying degrees, the epidemiological transition. We show that male excess mortality evolves positively over the observation period, is greater in later-born cohorts, and is strongly associated with the decline in infectious disease mortality. We propose a simple theory that explains these facts by a greater influence of infections on the biological aging of women compared to men. We calibrate the model with Indian data and show that it can replicate the feature of rising male excess mortality over time and birth year of cohorts.

Suggested Citation

  • Astrid Krenz & Holger Strulik, 2025. "Male excess mortality during the epidemiological transition: theory and evidence from India," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 38(4), pages 1-26, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:jopoec:v:38:y:2025:i:4:d:10.1007_s00148-025-01124-0
    DOI: 10.1007/s00148-025-01124-0
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00148-025-01124-0
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s00148-025-01124-0?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • I15 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Economic Development
    • J11 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Demographic Trends, Macroeconomic Effects, and Forecasts
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • N35 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - Asia including Middle East

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:jopoec:v:38:y:2025:i:4:d:10.1007_s00148-025-01124-0. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.