Left-handed

People who are left-handed are more dextrous with their left hand than with their right hand: they will probably also use their left hand for tasks such as personal care, cooking, and so on. Writing is not as good an indicator of handedness as it might seem, because many people who write with their right hand use their left for everything else.

"Disappearing" Left-Handers

Statistics show that older people are less likely to be left-handed than their younger counterparts — the percentages of lefties sharply drop off with increased age. In America, 12% of 20 year olds are left-handed, while only 5% of 50 year olds and less than 1% of people over 80 are. These numbers are surprisingly divergent — how can they be explained?

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A study published in 1991 claimed that these statistics indicate that left handed peoples' lifespans are shorter than those of their right-handed counterparts by as much as 9 years. They explained this gap by asserting that left-handed people are more likely to die in accidents as a result of their "affliction," which renders them clumsier and ill-equipped to survive in a right-handed world.

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This theory is in contention, as some researchers now attribute the different percentages among different age groups to the fact that older people would be more likely to have experienced pressure to switch hands, a factor not affecting the younger generations. This is supported by the fact that more women than men switched hands, and women live longer than men. However, this reasoning cannot explain all variation, and "the case of the disappearing southpaws" remains a mystery. Presently all explanations are incomplete and speculative, including such ideas that eventually lefties succumb to conformist pressures, or a "biological imperative" grips them late in life and they lose their left-handedness.

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It could also be attributed to the fact that the percentage of left handed children born has been increasing over time.

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