In all Member States, women leave their parental home and get married earlier than men…
Our life is filled with different milestones, such as starting school, entering adulthood by leaving the parental home and starting work, getting married, having children, retiring… and there are large differences between women and men.
The analyses of these milestones in life show, for example, that on average in the EU in 2016, women left their parental home two years earlier than men (at the age of 25 for women and 27 for men). Women also married earlier in almost all Member States, with an age difference at first marriage of more than 3 years in Bulgaria, Greece and Romania, while it was less than 2 years in Ireland, Lithuania, Portugal and the United Kingdom. Regarding the birth of the first child, women in the EU gave birth on average at the age of 29 in 2015, ranging from around 26 years in Bulgaria, Latvia and Romania to almost 31 years in Spain and Italy.
… and live longer than men
Another significant difference between women and men is life expectancy. In all Member States, women lived longer than men – the average in the EU was 83.3 years for women and 77.9 years for men in 2015, a difference of 5 ½ years. Among the Member States, the difference between women and men ranged from 10-11 years in Latvia and Lithuania to just below 4 years in Denmark, Ireland, Cyprus, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
For further information, see the digital publication The life of women and men in Europe – a statistical portrait.