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Fewer and fewer Merry Widows?

"MEN are catching up to women in the life expectancy game; the National Center for Health Statistics reports this month that the gap between them has shrunk to five years, the narrowest since 1946. If current trends continue, in 50 years men and women will live the same length of time".

So the New York Times reports. As the article analyses what this will all mean, it says, amongst other things:

"'Women don't need men as much as men need women," said John Gray, the therapist and author of, most famously, "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus."

Men living longer means women are less likely to suffer the fate that Miranda from "Sex and the City" so feared: dying alone with only the cat to rake over her rotting bones. With the existing gap, women are more likely than men to be widowed — 71 percent of people over the age of 85 are women, and the majority of them will have been married. And being alone increases their risk of dying or getting sick. No one is there to help when they fall; they eat less, and poorly.

Read the full NYT article here. As they say, times-are-a-changin'.....

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