A new study shows that women’s longer life expectancycomes at a price. On average, women spend a greater proportion oftheir later years suffering from disabilities.

A review of a number of studies conducted on Medicarebeneficiaries over the past 34 years found that the average65-year-old woman can expect to spend 30 percent of her remaininglife with a disability that prevents herfrom a fully active life.

Men, in contrast, live shorter lives, but only spend 19 percentof their Medicare years disabled. The study showed that malehealth and longevity has increased far more dramatically over thepast three decades than that of women.

The average man who reaches age 65 can expect to live to be 84,a life expectancy increase of five years since 1982.

Female senior citizens’ life expectancy has only increased bythree years during the same timeframe. That means a 65-year-oldwoman can still expect to outlive her male counterparts, but onlyby a year-and-a-half.

"Disability" is obviously a broad term, but for the purposes ofthe study, those who reported being unable to do one common dailytask, such as dressing, cooking, shopping, driving, or bathing ontheir own, were classified as disabled. Those who were unable to dothree such activities were classified as "severely disabled."

Ten percent of elderly women are severelydisabled, compared to 7 percent of men.

Why? For starters, the diseases that often kill men at a youngerage are less likely to kill women, but they still affect them. Andthe impact is often a disability during their remaining years.

Another relevant fact is that older women are typically poorerthan elderly men.

“Older women also have fewer economic resources than men onaverage so they may not be as able to accommodate their declines infunctioning when they do occur,” Vicki Freedman, a University ofMichigan professor who authored the study, told Reuters.