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New Article in “Demography” • 30.11.2022Female Advantage in Survival – But Lower Health?
A new article by Markus Sauerberg (BiB) and Vladimir Canudas-Romo (ANU) published in Demography compares cohort survival in good health for men and women in the United States.
The authors introduce a method for decomposing differences in healthy cross-sectional average length of life (HCAL). HCAL provides an alternative to the health expectancy (HE) indicator by including the health and mortality history of all cohorts present at a given time. While decompositions of HE differences account for contributions made by health and mortality, differences in HCAL are further disentangled into cohort-specific contributions.
In this research note, the authors illustrate the technique by analysing the sex gap in health and mortality for the United States. They use the harmonised version of the Health and Retirement Survey data and define the health status in terms of activities of daily living.
The results suggest that the female advantage in cohort survival is partly compensated by women’s lower cohort-specific health levels. At older ages, however, the sex differences in health are not large enough to compensate men’s disadvantage in cohort survival.
Sauerberg, Markus; Canudas-Romo, Vladimir (2022): Comparing Cohort Survival in Good Health: A Research Note on Decomposing Sex Differentials in the United States. Demography (online first).