Men had higher average salaries than women but have more credit, too. Men's average credit utilization percentage tended to be smaller. The article rattles off a number of reasons why women might have a higher cost of living and mentions life events such as taking off time from work to take care of aging parents or children.
Otherwise the above reasoning may have merits except for the little fact that when people marry or start to cohabit they will form a single economic unit. Married women or women in common law marriages will be able to rely on their men for financial support and very often they do. I suspect the un-PC truth is that women have a tendency to overspend more often than men and that men's overspending is often related to a need to impress women. While women tend to be more risk-averse than men, they also tend to be more susceptible to peer pressure than men. The need to keep up with the Joneses presumably afflicts women to a greater degree than men, on average. Women drive 70-80% of consumer purchasing either directly or by having influence over purchases paid by someone else. Advertisers know this perfectly well which is why most advertising is geared towards women. Advertising is effective which is perhaps at least partly why women also may have a greater average tendency to overspend.
