NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - People who rise to positions of power may reap more than a corner office with a view. According to recent study findings, men and women in high-level jobs outlive their rank-and-file counterparts.

The researchers followed more than 4,700 women and more than 14,000 men employed by the federal government as managers and professionals over 15 years and compared mortality rates with rates in the general population.

Overall, men in high-level jobs were 50% less likely to die than men the same age in the general population and women in these jobs were 38% less likely to die compared with other women. There was no difference in the rate of death due to heart disease between sexes in the study, but for males, the rate of death from cancer was markedly lower than for females, possibly due to higher rates of smoking among women in high-level jobs, the study's authors suggest.

``Since lung cancer was the leading type of cancer mortality among women in our study, we can only speculate that women in these high-level jobs may have been particularly likely to have been smokers,'' Dr. Kevin E. Kip, a study author from the University of South Florida in Tampa, told Reuters Health.

Women were less likely to die over 15 years than their male counterparts in similar jobs, the researchers report in the August 1st issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology. And for both men and women, the survival benefit of high-levels jobs was most pronounced among non-white workers.

``In summary, high-level employment is associated with substantially reduced mortality in both men and women,'' Dr. Katherine M. Detre, from the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, and her colleagues conclude.

In the US and other developed countries, women tend to outlive their male counterparts. But as more women move up the corporate ladder into traditionally male roles, taking on more responsibility and stress along with greater prestige and income, their changing roles may affect their health, the authors point out.

Indeed, women in high-level government jobs had less of a survival advantage over men in similar jobs, compared with the survival advantage of women over men in the general population, the investigators found.

``Employment in high-level occupations appears to confer a substantial, but not necessarily equal, level of survival advantage between men and women,'' Kip said.

SOURCE: American Journal of Epidemiology 2001;154:221-229.

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