Cordillera women outlive their men, says NSO data

BAGUIO CITY -   Cordillera women live longer than men, the National Statistical Coordination Board-Cordillera said.

Citing data from the National Statistics Office, the NCSB said women in the Cordillera Administrative Region outlive their male counterparts by 5.5 years.

The life expectancy of Cordillera women is 75 years, while men are estimated to live until 69 only.

Life expectancy is an estimate of the average number of additional years a person can expect to live, based on the age-specific death rates for a given year.

The projected life expectancies are from 1990 up to 2020, said AldrinBahit, officer-in-charge of the NSCB-Cordillera.

Women in Benguet province,  the NCSB notes, can outlive all women in other parts of the region (Abra, Kalinga, Mt. Province, Ifugao, Apayao including Baguio City) and even all the men in the region.

“While a woman in Benguet could celebrate her birthday until the age of 76, a woman in Kalinga-Apayao could live three years shorter at 73 years.”

Incidentally, Kalinga women have the lowest life expectancy among all the women in the region.

The NSO also revealed life expectancies for provinces of Abra, Kalinga-Apayao, Ifugao and Mt. Province are lower than the regional life expectancy for both women and men.

While Benguet men  live the longest among all other men in CAR with a life expectancy of 71 years, men in Ifugao have the shortest life expectancy of 67 years.

Also, Ifugao Province has the widest gap of life expectancy between men and women or a gap of more than six and a half years.

Bahit said they could not identify a reason to explain the different life expectancies.

“But experts say that this could be due to our diet, lifestyle, stress, the environment and even technology,” Bahit said.

In 2009, the Human Development Index (HDI) released by the NSCB revealed that people living in Benguet generally enjoy a better quality of life compared to those living  in the other five provinces in the region.

Benguet obtained an HDI of 0.883, the highest in CAR that year.  Kalinga had a composite index of 0.562 and Apayao with 0.529, Meanwhile, Abra had  0.508; Ifugao,  0.483; and Mt. Province,  0.449.

The HDI is a composite index measuring achievements in three basic dimensions of human development which are: to lead a long and healthy life, to acquire knowledge,  and to have access to resources needed for a decent standard of living.

A province can be classified under high-HDI if its index is above 0.800; medium, if it is within the range 0.500 - 0.800; and low, if the index is less than 0.500.

In 2009, Kalinga, Apayao and Abra were categorized under the medium-HDI provinces while Ifugao and Mt. Province belonged to the low-HDI range.

Only Benguet joined the ranks of the high-HDI provinces.