Is age just a number? Age actually is a number. but a number with some meaning associated with it. We are not immortal after all. We are born as babies, then grow up, become adults, often have children of our own, become old, and eventually die. Then that's it, the final end. But before going any further, let's discuss some other matters first.
In Latin American, Africa, and much of Asia, cars, trucks, buses, and other motor vehicles are not
left parked outside overnight. If left out there, they might well be gone in the
morning, or else have their tires, wheels, and even motors missing, Motor vehicles instead
are locked inside covered garages or fenced areas with armed guards always on duty there overnight.
So visitors from other places are often amazed to see our own vehicles here being left outside unattended overnight, on both city and small-town streets. Vehicles are not even manufactured in most developing countries nor would local buyers even trust them if they actually were. So they all are imported, with heavy duties, and must be protected at all times.
Foreign visitors now coming here may also be surprised to see our household doors left unlocked during the day or even overnight in both towns and rural areas like where we are living now. Even back in DC, I always left my front door on Capitol Hill unlocked during the day to avoid having to go downstairs from my 3rd-floor office to open the door. When the doorbell rang, I just looked out my 3rd-floor window to see who was there. Inside the house, what was there to steal anyway? Everyone has the same things. We don't live among pockets of poverty, although in some areas where poverty may exist (a relative term, not the same in every country), front doors might actually be locked. But out here in rural West Virginia where my son and I are living now, we don't even have any door locks at all. However, we do have a dog that would bark at any unfamiliar intruder.
Now, about husbands killing their wives, often blaming a mysterious nighttime intruder without any evidence, is that really credible after all? It would be exceedingly rare in this country to have an intruder enter a private home at night and kill only the female occupant without attacking her husband first, since he would be likely to defend her. Those guys claiming that intruders have killed their wives usually have no scratches or cuts. So what do you think actually happened? Was there really any intruder at all?
Do wives ever kill their husbands? Not so often, but when they actually do, they cite evidence that their husbands have been abusing them.
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Some more observations:
On average, men all over the world are taller, heavier, and with bigger bones and stronger muscles than most women. Yet women, despite being baby producers and, in most societies, being assigned lesser roles than men, with smaller incomes and less important jobs, still actually live much longer on average, than do most men. As has been mentioned before, this is partly due to women having longer telomeres and 2 X chromosomes, instead of just one, as men do. Estrogen in women is also protective.
So that's why the world's oldest people have always been women. But could a man ever becomes the world's old person? It's possible to imagine, but has never actually happened.
The world's oldest verified living woman and the oldest living person is 
