Foreword from Men’s Health Network
Every year, thousands of young men lose their lives before their time, and every one of those losses widens the Lifespan Gender Gap.
At Men’s Health Network, we work to raise awareness about the many factors that contribute to why men, on average, die nearly six years earlier than women. While access to healthcare and preventive screenings play a role, early deaths from preventable causes, like homicide, carry a profound impact on that statistic. When a man dies at 25, 30, or 35, his absence reshapes families, communities, and the nation’s health landscape.
The tragedy of male homicide isn’t only in the numbers, it’s in the stories behind them. Many of these deaths occur among young men who never had the chance to reach their full potential, to grow into fathers, mentors, or leaders. Each of these lives represents lost years, lost relationships, and lost opportunities to strengthen the communities they leave behind.
Dr. Andrew Smiler’s piece helps shed light on how these preventable deaths are woven into the broader challenge of men’s health. Understanding the connections between identity, relationships, and conflict resolution isn’t just an academic exercise, it’s a call to action. If we can equip boys and men with the emotional tools to navigate conflict, manage stress, and value their well-being, we can help close the gap that takes too many lives too soon.
This month and every month, Men’s Health Network continues its mission to reach men, boys, and their families where they live, work, play, and pray, to ensure that every man has the opportunity to live a longer, healthier, and safer life.
— Men’s Health Network
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The Opinions within this blog do not necessarily reflect the opinions or stances of Men’s Health Network.
Homicide and the Lifespan Gender Gap
It’s a well-known fact that men die younger than women, on average. We often talk about this gender lifespan gap as the result of men not having access to or not using healthcare. But today, I want to talk about something else: male deaths by homicide.
Homicide is the 16th leading cause of death in the U.S., but not everyone is equally likely to die of homicide. Overall, males comprise approximately 80% of homicide victims, which means men are four times more likely to die by homicide than are females. And the majority of homicide deaths occur among younger men; approximately two-thirds of male homicide victims are age 34 or younger. In fact, homicide is the 2nd leading cause of death among those 15-24, and the 3rd leading cause of death among people ages 25-34. In these age brackets, male victims outnumber female victims approximately five to one. Among Black teens and young adults aged 15-24, homicide is the leading cause of death.
Mathematically, each of these young deaths has an adverse impact on men’s average lifespan. At present, the average lifespan of an American male is 75.8 years, according to the National Center for health statistics. For every 25-year-old homicide victim, five men must live to age 85.8, or fifty men must live to age 76.8 to maintain the average.
Homicide isn’t just an issue for teens and young adults. Homicide is the 4th leading cause of death for children ages 1-14 and the 2nd most common cause of death among Black children in this age group. These young deaths also decrease the average lifespan.
The statistics on homicide I’m providing here are drawn from an annual report called Surveillance for Violent Deaths (SVD) published by the U.S. government. The most recent version was published in 2025 and summarizes data collected from 48 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. The report provides information on deaths by suicide, homicide, deaths from legal intervention, accidental firearm deaths, and those with indeterminate causes. Of the more than 74,000 deaths summarized in the 2025 report, approximately 24,000 occurred via homicide, and the vast majority of those homicide victims were male. It’s important to acknowledge that the vast majority of homicides – approximately 90% – are committed by men, so homicide is largely a case of male-on-male violence (link).
We don’t need to accept homicide deaths; they’re entirely preventable. These are man-made deaths, not the result of disease or natural disaster.
To prevent them, we need to know more about how they occur.
Fortunately, the SVD report gives us some of that information.
According to the SVD report, in more than half of cases where men are the victims, their killer was either an acquaintance/friend (27%) or some other person known to the victim (23%). Fewer than one in five male victims are killed by a stranger (18%), an intimate partner (8%), or a rival gang member (<2%). Taken together, approximately 60% of men are killed by someone they know, which means giving teen boys and young men a better understanding of how social relationships work and how to resolve conflict could save lives.
The most common setting in which a man becomes a homicide victim is when he’s killed at someone’s house or apartment; this is where a little more than one-third of male homicide victims die (37%). I imagine these deaths occurring at a house party, the parking lot of a club, or even somebody’s living room, where shots are fired.
To me, that scenario sounds like one where an argument got out of hand, and either no one backed down or the backing down still wasn’t sufficient. To prevent these deaths, we need to recognize the role of Precarious Manhood (link) and the impact of losing status in front of male peers (link). With that in mind, we can teach teenage boys and young men how and when to back down, including ways to do this while saving face. And we also need to teach them how to let someone back down, an important lesson for his friends, the other guy, and the other guy’s friends. If the friends continue to pressure one or both guys to fight, backing down won’t happen.
The next most common setting in which a man is murdered is on the street or on the highway (or at a rest stop), a setting that accounts for one-quarter of all male homicide deaths (23%). Maybe I’ve watched too many TV shows, but to me, this always sounds like some type of drug deal “gone wrong.” Two men meet up, get out of their cars for a moment, and one shoots the other. Or maybe it’s a setup with one man waiting in his car on the side of the road and killed by his assailant without anyone ever getting out of the car.
I’m a lot less clear on how we might prevent these deaths, but the SVD tells us that the vast majority of homicides, approximately 80%, involve firearms. We know that people carry firearms for protection, whether that’s because they see themselves as tough and need to support that image or whether they’ve been victimized and want to make sure they’re not victimized again. Because I work with individuals, I don’t really know how to make communities safer. But I do understand that if we all felt safer and less threatened, then people might be willing to leave their guns at home, or not own guns at all, which in turn would probably lower the homicide rate (and thus make people feel even safer).
About the Author:
Andrew P. Smiler, PhD, is a licensed therapist who works exclusively with teen boys and adult men. He is the author of several books on men’s lives, including the forthcoming “Clinical Work with Men: Understanding Masculinity in Psychotherapy,” the award-winning “Dating and Sex: A Guide for the 21st Century Teen Boy,” and the best-selling Introductory Textbook “The Masculine Self” (7th ed.) (https://sloanpublishing.com/smiler).
