Gender Inequalities in Health and Their Effect on the Economic Prosperity Represented by the GDP of Selected Developed Countries-Empirical Study.

Robert Stefko,Martin Rigelsky,Beata Gavurova,Viera Ivankova

doi:10.3390/ijerph17103555

Abstract

The objective is to evaluate the relations between gender health inequalities and economic prosperity in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. The groups included health indicators in the specification of men, women and gender inequalities: life expectancy, causes of mortality and avoidable mortality. The variable determining the economic prosperity was represented by the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The analytical processing included descriptive analysis, analysis of differences and analysis of relationships. The regression analysis was presented as the main output of the research. Most of the significant gender differences in health showed a more positive outcome for women. It is possible to identify a certain relation between gender health inequalities and economic prosperity. If there is some reduction in gender inequalities in health, the economic prosperity will increase. The reduction seems to be more effective on the part of men than women. The output of the cluster analysis showed the relations of indicators evaluating the inequalities and the prosperity. The countries such as Luxembourg, Norway or Switzerland showed very positive outputs, on the other hand, the countries with a potential for the improvement are Lithuania, Latvia or Estonia. Overall, the policies should focus on reducing the inequalities in avoidable mortality as well as reducing the frequent diseases in younger people.

Highlights

The purpose of an effective health system is to improve the health of the population [1], and to achieve equality in health [2,3]
The following two research questions were formulated: (RQ I-a) Is there a significant difference in selected health indicators between women and men? (RQ II-a) Is there a significant relation between economic prosperity and selected health indicators in terms of gender inequality? The aim of the second part was to use a regression analysis to evaluate the significance of the effect of female health indicators, male health indicators and gender inequalities in health on the economic prosperity represented by Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
The first part contained a descriptive analysis, an analysis of differences in selected health indicators between men and women, and an analysis of relationships that assessed the correlations between selected health indicators and economic prosperity represented by GDP

Summary

Introduction

The purpose of an effective health system is to improve the health of the population [1], and to achieve equality in health [2,3]. It points to the unbalanced progress that has caused considerable health inequalities between countries. This is evidenced by the fact that differences in health indicators occur between OECD countries [8]. Health inequalities can be identified between countries, and within countries [9] and between groups of population with different socioeconomic, racial or gender status [10,11,12].

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion