Older Women's Health

• Today, 1 in 8 people are over 65. By the year 2030, that number will approach 1 in 4. The fastest growing segment is the 85+ age group, in which women constitute the majority.
  
  
• Women's life expectancy is 7 years longer than men's.
  
  
• A woman born today can expect to reach age 79, a 30-year increase since 1900.
  
  
• The poverty rate among persons 65 years and older is 13% and nearly three-fourths of the nation's elderly poor are women.
  
  
• One in four women over age 65 has some form of heart disease. After age 50, women begin to develop and die from heart disease at a rate equal to that of men.
  
  
• Lung cancer is the number one cause of cancer deaths among older women, followed by breast cancer.
  
  
• In 1997, almost 16 percent of AIDS cases reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were in women over the age of 50. Women represent more than 10 percent of all reported AIDS cases among those over age 45.

  Source:
  http://www.4woman.gov/owh/pub/womhealth issues/index.htm
  http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus99ncb.pdf