A study has called into question the long-held belief that women outlive men.

Although men have a lower life expectancy than women, men have a “substantial chance of outliving females”, according to authors from Denmark.

Life expectancies, which summarise the average length of life, are a “simplistic measure” that are often interpreted as meaning that “men do not live as long as women”, researchers say.

They argue that simply looking at life expectancy means that people are not accounting for variation around the averages.