Gender differences in health and mortality

Reducing child mortality’ is the fourth goal among eight Millennium Development Goals by United Nations and for this child immunization is found to be the best way to reduce the child mortality in developing countries. Child immunization is also a key strategy to ensure global health security. The main objective of this paper is to examine the temporal changes and spatial patterns of child immunization in India and in different states. This study is based on the NFHS (National Family Health Survey) round I, II and III (from the year 1992 to 2006). For fulfilling the objectives, trend analyses and GIS mapping have been used. Although India as a whole is showing improvement in immunization coverage in each successive NFHS rounds, but this trend is not visible at micro level. The state Gujarat is declining in child immunization from NFHS I to III continuously. Southern states of India are showing high level of child immunization. Mizoram is the only state from north- east region which shows high level of immunization in urban areas. Examination of NFHS-3 data also reveals that immunization has very clear spatial patterns in the country. Southern state Tamil Nadu is reflecting high level of child immunization followed by Kerala. Himachal Pradesh is revealing better result in northern states of India. On the other hand, Rajasthan, Ut

This paper examines and demonstrates importance of the adult modal age at death (M) in longevity research. Unlike the life expectancy at birth (e0) and median age at death, M is determined solely by old-age mortality as far as mortality follows a bathtub curve. It represents the location of “old-age death heap” in the age distribution of deaths, and captures mortality shifts more accurately than conditional life expectancies such as e65. Although M may not be directly determined from erratic mortality data, a recently developed method for deriving M from the P-spline-smoothed mortality curve based on penalized Poisson likelihood is highly effective in estimating M. Patterns of trends and differentials in M can be noticeably different from those in other lifespan measures, as indicated in some examples. In addition, major mathematical models of adult mortality such as the Gompertz, logistic and Weibull models can be reformulated using M, which plays critical roles as the mortality level parameter in those models.

Comparing to Western countries, Taiwan has a higher suicide rate among cancer patients. This study use spatial analysis to understand the distribution pattern of suicide death among cancer patients in Taiwan. The 1995-2007 Cancer Registry Data and Mortality Data from the central government is used. We first used logistic regressions to examine the association of gender, age, type of cancer with the chance of suicide death. Space-time analysis by using Sat Scan statistics is used. The results show that men aged 40-64 years old with cancers that can change appearance are at highest risk of suicide death, and this pattern shows trend of increase with time. Cancer patients with good prognosis, the likelihood of suicide death within short period of time (1-3 months) after diagnosis is significantly lower than those with challenging prognosis. Significant time and space interaction effect is found. The hot spots of suicide are formed between 1999 and 2003, particularly at 2002. The areas mainly include southern part of Taiwan in which the prevalence of smoking and betel nut chewing are particularly high. Future local studies are warranted.

In this paper, we investigate associations between socioeconomic conditions in childhood and adulthood and obesity/overweight status in adulthood utilizing the Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES) conducted in 2007–2009. Identifying factors that affect obesity/overweight status is increasingly important in Korea given the sharp rise in the prevalence of obesity/overweight during the past decades. Specifically, we assess (i) whether the inverse relationship between adult SES and obesity/overweight, which is commonly found in the United States and some European countries, is also observed in Korea; (ii) whether childhood SES is associated with obesity/overweight independent of adult SES; and (iii) whether these relationships vary by gender. The preliminary results show that there is a strong relationship between childhood SES and adult obesity among South Koreans, and adult SES attenuated this relationship in women only. We also find that men with lower childhood SES are likely to have lower risk of obesity while low childhood and low adult SES predict higher risk of obesity/overweight for women.

It tries to identify patterns and determinants of gender gap in child health in India. It applies Borda rule, PCA, Logistic regression on 3 NFHS rounds. Children under 3 years are units of analysis.
With 21 indicators, it is shown that there are evidence of gender gap exists in all states of India. It is found that gender gap in various health outcomes are not much related to gender gap in various indicators of health-seeking behaviour. However for girl children’s health achievement, indicators of health-seeking behaviour are significantly related to indicators of health outcome. It is also shown that any consistently robust pattern of gender bias against girl children in child health is not present in India. But there is a consistent pattern of girl children’s absolute health achievement.
Hence we focus on girl children exclusively and tried to identify the determinants of health achievements for girl children. We analyse effects of some selected variables on chance of full immunisation, medical treatment in diarrhoea and fever/ cough, breastfeeding, malnutrition and mortality for girl children. Except for a few cases, the results are consistently robust. It has been found that, among others, female education and women’s empowerment do have a positive role in reducing gender bias in child health in India.

India is second larget home not only to the world’s population but also to diabetic patients. Such ‘overlapping health & demographic transition’, with non-communicable diseases as leading cause of mortality and morbidity in a country burdened with communicable diseases has altered the socioeconomic gradient in the prevalence of diabetes significantly with greater concentration of risk factors among the poor. Therefore public health policies need to diverge from a typical ‘lifestyle’ related explications of diabetes and must examine the coping with diabetes in a broader ‘social determinants’ perspective. Coping strategies are often based on cognitive, emotional and action-oriented efforts linked to diabetes involving lifestyle modifications and harm reduction. Unlike other chronic diseases, that have medium valence, lower controllability via medical intervention, Diabetes have high changeability and low ambiguity thus enough room for problem-oriented forms of coping. However, many studies have highlighted that contextual factors such as sociocultural environment have crucial bearing and explains differentials in coping among men and women. Thus this paper engages with the social determinants in health framework to analyze the influence of social and material deprivation (or abundance) that is associated with coping of diabetes.

The absolute number and proportion of China's elderly population is fast growing. Since population of women in the elderly age is increasing in proportion, aging society in the future is in the sense of an aged women society. With different physiological conditions and social status, health is difference between men and women. The Western academia classic representation this difference as: men are more likely to die than women, but women are sicker than men. In other words, the average life expectancy of men is to be shorter than women, but women are more weak than men (Gu, 2007). The hypothesis of this paper is: do men really superior than women in health?
This article use data from The China Health and Retirement of Pulmonary Function Study (CHARLS), 2010. Data show that health status of men is higher than women in despite of the area is well-developed or less-developed. However, health status is more likely to be closer between men and women in the well-developed area.
With logistic regression model the result is significant with 95% CI that health level is different between men and women.(1)There are gender differences in health level. (2)Men got higher scores than women in Self-assessment Health Status. (3) Women got higher scores than men in Activities of daily living. (4) Men are not healthier than women.

Although the relationships between child’s sex and risk of death before the age of 5 have often been studied, the mechanisms by which sex uniquely influences childhood mortality are not well understood or empirically documented. Most studies estimating sex differences in childhood mortality reported an unadjusted effect without controlling for covariates. In this paper the main purpose is to estimate and interpret adjusted effects on child mortality of child’s sex, adjusting for the matrices of social, economic, demographic, and biological factors. Data come from the most recent Demographic and Health Surveys in 30 sub-Saharan African nations. I conducted country-by-country multivariable analysis to assess sex differentials in under-five mortality (among recent singleton livebirth in the 5 years preceding the survey) using multilevel discrete-time hazard model. I used meta-analysis techniques to combine and summarize results from multiple countries. The results show a systematically higher mortality for male children compared to females in all countries except Sierra Leone and the relationship is significant in 18 of 30 countries. These patterns withstood controls for observed individual-and community level factors, as well as unobserved heterogeneity.

In the framework of the unfavourable mortality trends observed in the former Soviet republics, Caucasian countries experience specific evolution. In this region, civil registration of vital events remains not complete. We re-estimated mortality levels and trends in Armenia and Georgia since the early 1980s, confirming specific mortality patterns, but similar in both countries. However, gender differences are greater in Georgia than in Armenia. The aim of this paper is to explore the reasons for these differences: looking at all ages, but more specifically at adult mortality for which data are more reliable and where we suspect a major role of alcohol-related mortality that is higher in Georgia than in Armenia.

Two related objectives are the concern in this article. The first is to suggest a conceptual framework for explaining the association between poverty and Common Mental Disorder (CMD) and the mediating factors. The second is to examine statistically the hypothesized role of poverty and other demographic, socioeconomic and behavioral risk factors on CMD. Data from the Urban Inequity Study Survey (UIS) that was conducted in Cairo, the capital of Egypt in 2007 are used. About 2000 adult females and 2000 adult males were interviewed. Few percent of the study population has non/minimal depression (15% and 16% among males and females, respectively) One quarter of males and one third of females have mild depression and one third of each have moderate. Females exceed males in mild and moderate depression (64.6% vs. 59.2%). about 20% of the females and one quarter of the males have severe depression. Level of depression significantly declines with education, marriage, and age. Sad events and other difficult life situations such as; spinsterhood, divorce or widowhood, and difficulty of carrying out the daily physical functions are strong risk factors. Neither poverty nor living in poor neighborhood is risk factor. Males, contrary to females, are significantly impacted by their work conditions.