The fourth apocalypse: the human male survivor has lower life expectancy during senescence.

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   Very old men do not tend to be behaviorally very aggressive,  though they can of course be quite grouchy.  Several factors may be involved in this behavioral change.  As men get very old,  testosterone rates drop considerably though very slowly.   However,  it could be that very old age,  with its sedentary lifestyle,  and also with the lowering of a person's vitality,   just takes away the cutting edge of violence.   One piece of evidence to the effect that testosterone continues to modulate men’s aggressiveness in old age is the following:   a recent study investigated testosterone in violent aggressiveness in elderly men with dementia.   Dementia, as in Alzheimer’s disease, is a brain disease causing a person to loose all of his or her mental abilities.  The violent patients had much higher levels of testosterone than did the non-violent control group.   One could easily imagine that cultural factors could be at play in changes in male violence in old age as well:  maybe very old men finally learn that violence is antisocial and counterproductive...   At any rate, the gender gap in suicide rate wanes in senescence -a phenomenon which as I have tried to explain,  is related to violence in general.  However, vascular, oncological and infectious risk factors continue to disfavor males in old age,  and these elements of the gender gap in life expectancy even get worse.  This is not very surprising.   We all have to die,   and we are likely to die from whatever weakness of our body is the more critical for survival.  

I personally expect the gender gap in life expectancy during old age to widen in the next few years for the following reasons:  1)  smoking in women will reach a plateau,  2)  estrogen replacement therapy for post-menopausal women will become more prevalent (it protects against Alzheimer’s disease and against vascular disease including stroke).