TOP 10 Countries by Life Expectancy Gender Gap (2025)
Where women outlive men the most: mapping the life expectancy gender gap
The gender gap in life expectancy is a structural feature of mortality patterns in every country: women live longer than men almost everywhere on the planet. Globally, the difference is around five years, but in a small group of countries the gap widens to between 8.5 and more than 11 years. These extreme gaps are driven not only by biological advantages for women, but also by concentrated male exposure to cardiovascular risks, alcohol, tobacco, occupational hazards and injuries.
This ranking focuses on sovereign countries with a population above one million, using 2025 life expectancy at birth (female versus male) based on harmonised United Nations World Population Prospects estimates. Values are rounded and used for comparative analytics rather than for official reporting.
Table 1. Top 10 countries by life expectancy gender gap, 2025 (women minus men, years)
| Rank | Country & life expectancy, 2025 (years) | Gender gap (years) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Russian Federation — women ≈ 79.3, men ≈ 67.7 | ≈ 11.6 |
| 2 | Ukraine — women ≈ 79.5, men ≈ 70.0 | ≈ 9.6 |
| 3 | Belarus — women ≈ 79.4, men ≈ 69.9 | ≈ 9.4 |
| 4 | Georgia — women ≈ 79.4, men ≈ 69.9 | ≈ 9.4 |
| 5 | Lithuania — women ≈ 80.9, men ≈ 71.6 | ≈ 9.3 |
| 6 | Viet Nam — women ≈ 79.5, men ≈ 70.2 | ≈ 9.3 |
| 7 | Mongolia — women ≈ 76.9, men ≈ 67.8 | ≈ 9.1 |
| 8 | Republic of Moldova — women ≈ 75.8, men ≈ 66.8 | ≈ 9.0 |
| 9 | Latvia — women ≈ 80.7, men ≈ 71.9 | ≈ 8.8 |
| 10 | Thailand — women ≈ 81.2, men ≈ 72.7 | ≈ 8.5 |
Note: estimates for 2025 are based on UN World Population Prospects, harmonised and rounded for comparability. Only sovereign states with a population > 1 million are included; several small territories also exhibit large gender gaps but are excluded from this ranking.
Figure 1. Life expectancy gender gap in the Top 10 countries, 2025
The chart shows the difference in life expectancy at birth between women and men (in years) for the Top 10 countries. Values are approximate and smoothed; they are intended for comparative analysis rather than as precise official figures.
What lies behind the gap: cardiovascular risk, alcohol and injuries
The countries with the widest gender gaps form a distinct cluster. Many are post-Soviet or post-socialist economies in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, joined by rapidly changing middle-income countries such as Viet Nam and Thailand. In all of them, women reach life expectancies comparable to or slightly below those in Western Europe, while men lose nearly a decade of life on average.
At the core of this divergence is a combination of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and external causes of death. Cardiovascular diseases and cancers dominate mortality in both sexes, but men experience higher and earlier mortality from ischaemic heart disease, stroke and alcohol-related conditions. Added to this is a much heavier burden of injuries among men, including road traffic accidents, occupational injuries, homicides and suicides. These external causes account for only a small fraction of deaths among women, but a sizeable share among men in the same countries.
The gender gap in life expectancy therefore reflects not just a biological advantage for women, but a systematic excess of premature male mortality from NCDs and injuries, amplified by high levels of alcohol consumption, smoking, risk-taking and weaker engagement of men with preventive and primary care.
Table 2. Main causes of male mortality in selected high-gap countries
| Country | Dominant causes of death in men | Typical profile of male deaths |
|---|---|---|
| Russian Federation | Non-communicable diseases, especially ischaemic heart disease, stroke and cancers, together with chronic liver disease and other alcohol-associated conditions. | NCDs account for the overwhelming majority of male deaths, with cardiovascular disease alone responsible for a large share. External causes — injuries, poisonings, violence and suicides — contribute a high additional burden and are much more common in men than women, helping to explain an 11 year-plus gap in life expectancy. |
| Ukraine | Cardiovascular diseases (heart disease and stroke), cancers, and alcohol-related liver disease; external causes of death including road injuries and suicides. | Before the full-scale war, more than two-thirds of deaths were already due to cardiovascular disease, with male mortality markedly exceeding female levels. Combined with higher exposure to alcohol, tobacco and unsafe driving, this produced a gender gap of almost 10 years even before accounting for the mortality shock of armed conflict. |
| Kazakhstan | NCDs, particularly cardiovascular diseases and cancers, plus injuries (road traffic injuries, suicides and other external causes). | Men in Kazakhstan face high cardiovascular mortality, coupled with substantial injury-related deaths in young and middle age. As a result, male life expectancy is dragged down by avoidable deaths well before retirement age, creating a gender gap of more than eight years despite improvements in overall survival. |
| Viet Nam | NCDs such as stroke, ischaemic heart disease and chronic respiratory disease, alongside traffic injuries and other external causes. | Rapid economic growth has shifted the burden of disease towards NCDs for both sexes, but men still carry higher risks due to smoking, occupational exposure and road traffic injuries. This combination pushes male mortality up at working ages, expanding the female advantage in life expectancy to more than nine years. |
Note: cause-of-death patterns are summarised from WHO Global Health Estimates and national mortality statistics. Shares by cause are approximate and intended to highlight broad differences between male and female mortality structures rather than provide exact percentages.
Figure 2. Evolution of the life expectancy gender gap, 1990–2025 (selected countries)
The lines show the estimated difference between female and male life expectancy at birth from 1990 to 2025 in three countries. Values are stylised and smoothed based on UN and WHO estimates; the goal is to illustrate long-run trajectories rather than reproduce exact annual values.
Why the gender gap in life expectancy matters for societies
Large differences in life expectancy between women and men are not just a statistical curiosity. They shape the age structure of populations, the size of the labour force and the balance between years lived in good health and years lived with disability or chronic disease. In the countries at the top of this ranking, younger and middle-aged men are disproportionately missing from the population due to preventable deaths, while women survive into older ages with relatively high longevity.
This pattern has several consequences. Economically, high levels of premature male mortality reduce the stock of experienced workers, weaken productivity growth and can increase the fiscal burden on pension and health systems. Socially, it leads to large numbers of widows and female-headed households, especially in rural and deindustrialised regions. Health systems must manage a dual challenge: treating advanced NCDs in men who present late, while also providing long-term care and support for older women who outlive their partners by a decade or more.
Because the gender gap is largely driven by modifiable risk factors — tobacco, alcohol, diet, uncontrolled hypertension, unsafe roads and weak engagement with preventive care — it is also a critical lever for policy. Closing even part of the gap would translate into millions of additional healthy life years for men and more balanced ageing trajectories for societies as a whole.
Policy takeaways: how to narrow the life expectancy gender gap
- Target male cardiovascular risk early. Scale up screening and treatment for hypertension and hyperlipidaemia in men in their 30s and 40s, when excess cardiovascular risk first begins to diverge sharply from women.
- Reduce harmful alcohol and tobacco use. In high-gap countries, male drinking and smoking patterns are central drivers of the gap. Effective taxation, marketing restrictions and cessation support can rapidly lower mortality in working-age men.
- Invest in injury and road safety. Road traffic crashes, occupational injuries and violence account for a disproportionate share of male deaths. Enforcement of speed limits, seat-belt and helmet use, and workplace safety standards directly translate into years of life gained for men.
- Strengthen primary care access for men. Men in many of these countries use preventive and primary care services less often than women. Making clinics more accessible, integrating workplace screening and tackling stigma around help-seeking are essential to reduce late presentation.
- Monitor gender gaps systematically. Regular publication of sex-disaggregated life expectancy and cause-of-death data helps track progress, identify vulnerable subgroups and evaluate whether policies are effectively narrowing the gap over time.
Importantly, narrowing the gender gap does not mean reducing female life expectancy; the objective is to lift male life expectancy closer to the female benchmark. Evidence from Western Europe and parts of East Asia shows that, as cardiovascular and injury mortality falls in men, the difference between male and female life expectancy can shrink to three or four years without sacrificing the gains women have made. For the countries in this Top 10 ranking, achieving a similar convergence would require sustained investment in prevention, primary care and broader social policy, but the potential returns in avoided deaths and healthier ageing are substantial.
Primary data sources and technical notes
The ranking and charts in this article are based on harmonised public data. Key sources include:
-
UN World Population Prospects (UN WPP), latest
revision. Provides life expectancy at birth by sex for
all countries and territories. Estimates for 2025 are used as
the reference year for the gender gap ranking.
https://population.un.org/wpp -
Worldometer — Life Expectancy by Country.
Aggregates UN WPP data and reports female, male and total life
expectancy for 2025; used here as a convenient tabular source
for cross-country comparisons and computation of the gender
gap.
https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/life-expectancy/ -
WHO Global Health Estimates and WHO country
profiles. Supply cause-of-death distributions by broad
cause groups (communicable, NCDs, injuries) and leading causes
of death for men and women in each country.
https://www.who.int/data/gho
https://data.who.int/countries -
Our World in Data — Why do women live longer than
men? Provides global context on the evolution of the
sex gap in life expectancy, with charts and country-level
trajectories drawing on UN WPP and WHO data.
https://ourworldindata.org/why-do-women-live-longer-than-men -
OECD and national statistical publications (where
available). Used for complementary evidence on trends
in cardiovascular and injury mortality, especially in Eastern
Europe and Central Asia.
https://stats.oecd.org/
All numerical values in tables and charts are rounded and, where necessary, lightly smoothed to improve cross-country comparability. They should be interpreted as indicative of patterns and orders of magnitude, not as a substitute for country-specific official statistics.
Download assets: Top 10 countries by life expectancy gender gap
ZIP-archive with the data tables and chart images used in this StatRanker article. You can reuse the files for your own analysis, visualisations or presentations.
- Table 1 (CSV): Top 10 countries — female and male life expectancy, gender gap (years).
- Table 2 (CSV): Main causes of male mortality in selected high-gap countries.
- Figure 1 (PNG): Bar chart “Life expectancy gender gap in the Top 10 countries, 2025”.
- Figure 2 (PNG): Line chart “Evolution of the life expectancy gender gap, 1990–2025”.
