American boys and girls born in 2019 are projected to spend 48% and 60% of their lifetimes, respectively, consuming prescription medications, as per recent analytical findings.
An American born in 2019 is expected to spend a greater portion of their life taking prescription drugs compared to the time spent in marriage or education, based on new research from Jessica Ho, an associate professor of sociology and demography at Penn State. Her findings indicate that American men are likely to spend about 48% of their lives on prescription medication, while this figure rises to 60% for women.
Ho recently reported her findings in the journal Demography.
“As an American, I’d like to know what medications I’m putting in my body and how long I can expect to take them,” said Ho, who is also an associate of Penn State’s Social Science Research Institute. “The years that people can expect to spend taking prescription drugs are now higher than they might spend in their first marriage, getting an education, or being in the labor force. It’s important to recognize the central role that prescription drug use has taken on in our lives.”
Study Methodology and Key Findings
Ho used nationally representative surveys conducted by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from 1996 through 2019 to study prescription drug use across the United States. The surveys include information from approximately 15,000 households chosen annually and collect information every five months, offering better recall than surveys taken once a year. In addition, nearly 70% of survey respondents allow the AHRQ and CDC to verify their prescriptions with their pharmacies, affording the surveys higher levels of
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The researcher then used mortality data from the National Center for Health Statistics and the Human Mortality Database to estimate how long Americans born in 2019 could expect to live. She then combined this information with the survey data to estimate the percent of the lifetimes they could expect to spend taking prescription medications.
She found that the majority of American men are taking prescription drugs by age 40, while most American women are taking prescription drugs by age 15. On average, a newborn boy in 2019 could expect to take prescription drugs for approximately 37 years, or 48% of his life. A newborn girl in 2019 could expect to take them for approximately 47.5 years, or 60% of her life.
Gender Differences in Prescription Drug Use
“We see that women start taking prescription drugs earlier than men do, and some of that is related to birth control and hormonal contraceptives,” Ho said. “But it is also related to greater use of psychotherapeutic drugs and painkillers among women. If we consider the difference between men and women, excluding contraceptives would only account for about a third of the difference. The remaining two-thirds is primarily driven by the use of other hormone-related drugs, painkillers, and psychotherapeutic drugs used to treat conditions such as depression, anxiety, and
Men, on the other hand, tend to take more statins and other medications to treat