Definition
The male-female health-mortality paradox results from the fact that females live longer than males, but spend a higher proportion of their total life expectancy in poorer health states. The phenomenon is depicted in the schematic Fig. 1, where the grey shaded area represents the proportion of total life expectancy spent in poor health, for females and males, respectively, on panels a and b. It is clear that the grey shaded areas, representative of poor life expectancy, are larger for women than for men. The sum of the white area and the grey shaded area is equal to the total life expectancy. Since health is an important predictor of death, the fact that women live longer in spite of a higher proportion of their lives spent in unhealthy state puzzles researchers. Some other terms used to describe the phenomenon are: “gender and health paradox,” “morbidity paradox,” “morbidity-mortality paradox,” or “male-female health-survival paradox.”
Schematic depiction of the...
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Acknowledgements
This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 725187). PI: Marc Luy.
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di Lego, V., Lazarevič, Luy, M. (2019). The Male-Female Health-Mortality Paradox. In: Gu, D., Dupre, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Gerontology and Population Aging. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69892-2_798-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69892-2_798-1
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The Male-Female Health-Mortality Paradox- Published:
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69892-2_798-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69892-2_798-1