Publisher's Synopsis
Women generally live longer than men. In all developed countries and most developing ones, women outlive men, sometimes by a margin of up to 10 years. In the United States, life expectancy at birth is about 79 years for women and about 72 years for men. The gender discrepancy is most pronounced in the very old: among centenarians worldwide, women outnumber men in the ratio of nine to one. The gender gap has widened in this century as gains in female life expectancy have exceeded those for males. According to Thomas T. Perls and Ruth C. Fretts of the Harvard Medical School, the death rates for women are lower than those for men at all ages - even before birth. They posited that although boys start life with some numerical leverage - about 115 males are conceived for every 100 females - their numbers are preferentially whittled down thereafter. Just 104 boys are born for every 100 girls because of the disproportionate rate of spontaneous abortions, stillbirths and miscarriages of male foetuses. More boys than girls die in infancy.And during each subsequent year of life, mortality rates for males exceed those for females, so that by age 25 women are in the majority.
