Extended lives or extended sufferings for women? Gender differentials in health status of elderly in India

While the sex ratio generally favors men in India,the trend reverses in favor of females at older ages.More often than not, women are over burdened with cumulative inequalities.Thus,a longer life span is directly correlated to greater morbidity and higher incidence of chronic diseases and sufferings for the older women.However,only few studies addressed the existing gender differentials in health status and health seeking behavior,particularly among the aged population.Using the data “Study of Global Ageing and Adult Health”(India)this paper aims to find out the gender differentials between self-reported morbidity and symptom-based morbidity of selected chronic diseases between men and women aged 50+ for India.An attempt is made to identify the risk factors that are leading to gender differentials in health among the elderly by applying the gender framework for chronic diseases.It will also probe the extent of gender differentials in treatment seeking behavior.Results show that for most of the chronic diseases the symptom based prevalence is much higher than the self-reported prevalence for both the sexes.But this difference is higher among the elderly women than the elderly men.The higher prevalence of symptom based disease among women shows that women are mostly unaware of their health needs and problems as compared to men.