RESEARCH ARTICLE Gender Differentials in Self-Rated Health and Self-Reported Disability among Adults in

Background The extant literature on gender differentials in health in developed countries suggests that women outlive men at all ages, but women report poorer health than men. It is well estab-lished that Indian women live longer than men, but few studies have been conducted to understand the gender dimension in self-rated health and self-reported disability. The pres-ent study investigates gender differentials in self-rated health (SRH) and self-reported dis-ability (SRD) among adults in India, using a nationally representative data. Methods Using data on 10,736 respondents aged 18 and older in the 2007 WHO Study on Global Ageing and Adult Health in India, prevalence estimates of SRH are calculated separately for men and women by socio-economic and demographic characteristics. The association of SRH with gender is tested using a multinomial logistic regression method. SRD is assessed using 20 activities of daily living (ADL). Further, gender differences in total life expectancy (TLE), disability life expectancy (DLE) and the proportion of life spent with a dis-ability at various adult ages are measured. Results The relative risk of reporting poor health by women was significantly higher than men (rela-tive risk ratio: 1.660; 95 % confidence Interval (CI): 1.430–1.927) after adjusting for socio-economic and demographic characteristics. Women reported higher prevalence of severe and extreme disability than men in 14 measures out of a total20 ADL measures. Women aged less than 60 years reported two times more than men in SRD 5 ADLs. Finally, both DLE and proportion of life spent with a disability were substantially higher for women irre-spective of their ages