In discussing new government research, the New York Times focuses on the role of income inequality on life expectancy while neglecting the still larger gender-based disparity. Perhaps the fact that women live longer doesn’t even qualify as news. After all, everyone already knows that men live on average to about 74 while women live for a gazillion years. On the other hand, it is certainly surprising that the “most deprived” women generally live longer than the “least deprived” men. Neither class or gender disparities have conspiratorial origins despite the suggestion of many politicians. The disparities in part arise from personal choices that the rich and poor, men and women make. Only at the very end of the article do we learn that the least affluent die earlier not just because they are less likely to have health insurance, but also because they are more likely to smoke and eat unhealthy foods. I would guess poor women live longer than affluent men because money alone doesn’t buy common sense, and men are far more likely to engage in risky activity. Another angle overlooked by the Times is what these stats suggest about Social Security. It’s not necessarily a winning messaging strategy for personal retirement accounts, but the current system acts less as a social safety net than a mechanism to redistribute wealth from the poor to the rich and from men to women.
