Room For Debate asks contributors to discuss the finding that "the number of men age 65 and older increased by 21 percent from 2000 to 2010, nearly double the 11.2 percent growth rate for women in that age group." Demographer Ronald Lee augments the data:
This difference reflects a change in earlier smoking behavior for men and women. Men took up smoking earlier in the century than women, so male life expectancy experienced its period of slow growth a while ago while the sex gap in mortality widened. Women started smoking later, and the slow improvement in their life expectancy reflects this.
Alicia H. Munnell weighs "cost vs benefits":
[T]he convergence in life expectancy may well lead to an improvement in the economic well-being of older Americans.
Of all the factors associated with poverty in old age, the most critical is to be a woman without a husband. Nonmarried women who enter retirement tend to end up poor, because the U.S. retirement income system bases benefits on earnings, and women have lower lifetime earnings than men. Married women, who share in their husband’s benefits, fare much better than single women. Only 8 percent of married women aged 65 to 69 are poor or near poor, compared to 28 percent of the nonmarried.
The Dish 