[gambiting]

Sure, but the exact same argument applies to charging men more - we know as a matter of fact that men get into more accidents than women do, for various reasons. Yet at least some places decided it's illegal to charge men more - so knowing that it's a statistical inevitably that men will cause more accidents, now both sexes pay more, but at least the premiums are equal. Is it better overall? My internal logic tells me that it is, because it's not your fault that you're a man, so just because other men crash more often why should you be charged more?

(This can get into a really long discussion about a lot of things that can correlate with higher accident rates and how sometimes it's a false correlation, like how in some places black people have more accidents, but it's not because they are black but because they are poorer on average and drive older less safe cars - but filtering by race could be used as a quick filter which is, obviously, unfair(and illegal))

[clusterfish]

Age is different because it is much more equitable. Everyone was young and most people will grow to be old so most people will see both the upside and downside of fair-risk pricing by age.

Not the same with gender or race, you're stuck with what you're born with (statistically insignificant numbers of transitions notwithstanding).

I think this is a meaningful, if not perfect, distinction.