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Daily Data InsightsWomen live longer than men in every country in the world

Women live longer than men in every country in the world

The chart titled "Women live longer than men in every country" shows a scatter plot of life expectancy for men and women in 2023, categorized by continent. Each dot represents a country, with its color indicating the continent: Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, Oceania, or South America. The x-axis displays life expectancy for men, while the y-axis shows life expectancy for women. A diagonal line indicates where life expectancy for both genders would be equal. All dots are above this line, meaning women have a higher life expectancy than men in every country. The trend shows increasing life expectancy for both genders, with women consistently living longer. Data source: UN World Population Prospects (2024).

In every country in the world, women tend to live longer than men.

You can see this in the chart, which shows the average life expectancy of women on the vertical axis and the life expectancy of men on the horizontal axis, both for 2023. Each dot is one country.

As you can see, all countries lie above the middle line, which means that women's life expectancy was higher than men's.

There are various reasons why this gap in life expectancy exists, which my colleagues Saloni Dattani and Lucas Rodés-Guirao explain in their article. Typically, births are skewed in favor of males, with around 105 boys being born for every 100 girls. However, throughout childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, mortality rates tend to be higher in males.

This data comes from the United Nations’ World Population Prospects.

Read our article on why women live longer than men →

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