Gender Differences in Healthy and Unhealthy Life Expectancy

Abstract

There is consistent evidence that women live longer than men at all ages, but spend a higher proportion of their total life expectancy in poorer health, a phenomenon described as the “male-female health-survival paradox” or the “gender paradox in health and mortality”. However, it is difficult to explain the process because morbidity by sex differs considerably across domains of health, age groups, social contexts and severity level. In addition, women and men report differently their health in surveys, making it cumbersome to understand whether what drives the paradox is a higher female morbidity or male mortality, a different reporting behaviour, or all of those aspects together. The aim of this chapter is to demonstrate the magnitude of those differences in Europe using different health domain indicators (activity limitation, chronic morbidity and self-perceived health) from the EHEMU Information System and the reporting behaviour by sex from the SHARE survey vignettes.