Sex differences in the association between Self-perceived health and mortality at adult ages in Europe

Abstract

Goal: To explore the age pattern of the relationship between self-perceived health and mortality at ages beyond youth (35-79) for men and women in six European countries with different with different patterns of morbidity: Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Poland and Hungary. Methods and data sources: Descriptive analysis of the patterns of both the prevalence of poor self-perceived health and the difference between the logarithmic transformations of the mortality probabilities and the prevalence of poor health in 2005 and 2009. The data about self-perceived health come from the European Union statistics on income and living conditions (EU-SILC), whereas mortality data come from Human Mortality Database (HMD). Results: Both indicators show a growing pattern by age though the relative value of this increase is not equal in mortality and poor self-perceived health. Poor self-perceived health prevalence rises by age with a lower intensity than mortality for both sexes in all the analysed countries. This change by age in the relationship between both health outcomes shows similar values for women and men, with the exception of Poland and Hungary. Conclusions: The change in the relationship by age between self-perceived health and mortality would be explained by the process of standardization of individual’s morbidity. Different age changes between sexes seem to be related with higher levels of gender inequalities in countries where this difference is observed, though this must be confirmed in future research.