Israel Defense Forces Medical Corps, Military PO Box 02149, Tel Hashomer, Israel ; Department of Military Medicine, Hebrew University Faculty of Medicine, Jerusalem, Israel.
Israel Defense Forces Medical Corps, Military PO Box 02149, Tel Hashomer, Israel.
Mil Med Res. 2015 Oct 30;2:29. doi: 10.1186/s40779-015-0057-y. eCollection 2015.
Occupation is a significant factor affecting life, health and well-being. Long-term military service is a unique career path that may have an influence on life expectancy, even after excluding obvious risks such as battlefield mortality. However, it remains unclear what the effects of a military career are on the life trajectory of personnel after retiring from service. This study compared life expectancy among retired military personnel (RMP) to their sex and birth cohort-specific reference populations.
For this historical cohort study, we collected data on the sex, year of birth, year of death, time in service, and rank at end of service for 4862 Israeli RMPs. Data on reference populations were provided by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics by birth decade from 1900 to 1989. We calculated the difference between each individual RMP's age at death and the "expected" age at death, based on sex and birth cohort-specific means in the reference populations.
Overall, 67.9 % of RMPs lived longer than average relative to their sex-specific birth cohort. This difference in life expectancy was more pronounced among women than among men. There was a significant trend of increasing differences between RMP males and reference males over time (P < 0.002), whereas no significant trend was identified among females. Length of service and rank were not associated with relative longevity for RMPs.
The mechanism of the protective effect of military service on life expectancy remains unknown, but our findings indicate that it affects men and women differently, with women being more likely to benefit from the potential protective effect of military service. The healthy worker effect is known to vary from one occupation to another, and to the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to quantify the magnitude of the healthy worker effect among career military servicemen and women.
职业是影响生活、健康和幸福感的重要因素。长期的军旅生涯是一种独特的职业道路，可能会影响预期寿命，即使排除了战场死亡率等明显风险。然而，目前尚不清楚军旅生涯对退役人员的生活轨迹有何影响。本研究比较了退役军人（RMP）的预期寿命与其性别和出生队列特定的参考人群。
在这项历史队列研究中，我们收集了 4862 名以色列 RMP 的性别、出生年份、死亡年份、服役时间和退役时的军衔数据。参考人群的数据由以色列中央统计局按 1900 年至 1989 年的出生十年提供。我们根据参考人群中性别和出生队列特定的平均值，计算了每个 RMP 的死亡年龄与“预期”死亡年龄之间的差异。
总体而言，67.9%的 RMP 比其性别特定的出生队列预期寿命更长。这种预期寿命的差异在女性中比男性更为明显。随着时间的推移，RMP 男性与参考男性之间的差异呈显著增加趋势（P<0.002），而女性则没有明显趋势。服役时间和军衔与 RMP 的相对长寿无关。
军旅生涯对预期寿命的保护作用机制尚不清楚，但我们的发现表明，它对男性和女性的影响不同，女性更有可能受益于军旅生涯的潜在保护作用。众所周知，健康工人效应因职业而异，据我们所知，这是首次尝试量化职业军人中健康工人效应的幅度。
