Friday 19 August 2011

Testosterone hump kills young males - and has come 2.5 months earlier every ten years.

It's not news that young men take more risks than young women, thanks to testosterone. The chart shows how much more risk.  The peak accident age has been moving to the left for a couple hundred years (2.5 months per decade according to stats) but has slowed lately. "Being 18 today is like being 22 in 1800", says Joshua Goldstein.  This is the first report to make clear sexual maturity is arriving earlier for boys just as first menstruation for girls has been moving up for a couple hundred years.

What I notice:  The first months of life are still the riskiest.   Boys and girls have similar fatal accident rates until puberty.  Males stay well ahead of females for the rest of their life but are especially at risk in their early twenties.  To a point, this benefits females who can can offload risk to male companions.
The chart appears to represent cumulative risk of death-by-accident since we avoid more risk as we approach 40.   It would be helpful to see this re-charted as risk per any given year.


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