Gender Disparities in Adult Health: An Examination of Three Measures of Morbidity

Recent examinations of gender differences in physical health suggest that women’s disadvantage may be smaller than previously assumed, varying by health status measure and age. Using data from the 1997–2001 National Health Interview Surveys, we examine gender-by-age differences in life-threatening medical conditions, functional limitations, and self-rated health and consider whether potential mediating mechanisms (e.g., socioeconomic status, behav-ioral factors) operate uniformly across health measures. The results show that the gender gap is smallest for life-threatening medical conditions and that men do increasingly worse with age. For self-rated health, men are more likely to report excellent health at younger ages, but with increasing age this gap clos-es. Only for functional limitations do we find a consistent pattern of female dis-advantage: Women report more functional limitations than men, and the gap increases with age. The ability of explanatory mechanisms to account for these patterns varies by the health measure examined. 95 It is an accepted fact that women live longer than men. In 2001, life expectancy at birth in the United States was 5.5 years longer for women than for men—79.8 years versus 74.3 years, respectively (Arias 2004). The relation-ship between gender and morbidity is more complex, with women experiencing poorer health than men on a variety of outcomes (Rieker and Bird 2000; Verbrugge 1985). Recent examinations of this paradox suggest that gender differences in health may be small-er than previously assumed, varying by health status measure and age (Arber and Coope