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Comment by robotrout | Hacker News Reader

The whole "life expectancy" calculation which takes into account infant mortality, death by accident, death by childbirth, death by violence, etc., seems to cloud the issue that most people are more interested in, which is "death by aging".

Do women tend to get older than men? Yes they do, and talking about non-age related causes of death, such as the article does, just confuses the issue. Such a question should ignore non-aging causes of death that skew the statistics such as death in childbirth and infant mortality in earlier eras.

Women often complain that men lose weight easier than they do, and that men don't get cold as easy as women. Both of these point to generally faster metabolisms for men, which I would think would cause men to "burn out" their bodies earlier.

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>Do women tend to get older than men

At the very least, this is pretty well supported at the upper end of lifespans.

Looking at the list of oldest people recorded in modern times[1], the list is predominantly female. There is only one man in the top 20 positions (Jiroemon Kimura at number 16), and only 3 in the top 40.

Whether this is due to the same cause as the overall trend, I can't say. Looking at the CDC life expectancy tables for ages 65 and 75, however, we still see a gap of several years between male and female life expectancy, so whatever is causing the divergence probably isn't related to youth and early-mid adult mortality.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_people#Ten_oldest_verif...

[2]https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2010/022.pdf

> Do women tend to get older than men,

Yes.

We have data that proves that, you can compare the ranges where people are older:

http://www.censusscope.org/us/chart_age.html

> and if so, why?

The OP article is exactly about that too. And they link to the scientific work, already 12 years old:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S155085790...

The key statements from its abstract:

"For virtually all the primary causes of death and at virtually all ages, mortality rates are higher for men. Women do not live longer than men because they age more slowly, but because they are more robust at every age."

A man will generally have more body fat than their female counterpart hence men will not feel the "cold" as easily. I'm not sure that having more body fat than women is a good indication of a higher metabolism.

There are also more healthcare opportunities for women compared to men so I suspect that also plays a part and then there is also the fact that women tend to live less stressful lives than men (choice of occupation) which is probably the biggest contributor to ones own life expectancy.

That is wrong. Women generally have a higher body fat percentage than men.

> A man will generally have more body fat than their female counterpart hence men will not feel the "cold" as easily.

Men have lower typical body fat than women, so you are starting from a wrong assumption.

After doing a bit research it does seem to be wrong however not entirely wrong. Body fat for women is also more concentrated in certain areas compared to men which would at least go towards explaining some of the reasons why women feel the cold more easily.

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