Gender Differences in Aging Reassessed It has been widely
assumed that men age earlier than women, as evidenced by their
higher mortality rates and shorter average life spans. But three
Northern Michigan University biology professors contend that the
opposite is true. They say theory and data suggest that females
begin to exhibit signs of physiological decline earlier than
males, and that higher mortality figures are not necessarily
correlated with the rate at which we age. In a recent issue of
the American Journal of Human Biology, an article co-authored by
Brent Graves, Mac Strand and Alec Lindsay presents a novel
interpretation of how selection interacts with cultural and
environmental factors to account for gender differences in the
aging process. “Because death can be caused by numerous factors,
higher mortality rates don’t necessarily indicate that men age
faster,” Graves said. He added that the physiological evidence
to the contrary includes the tendency for women to suffer vision
loss more rapidly and