Educational Inequalities in Life and Healthy Life Expectancies among the 50-Plus in Spain

This study computes educational inequalities in life expectancy (LE), healthy life expectancy (HLE), and unhealthy life expectancy (ULE) by gender and education level in Spain in 2012. Death registrations and vital status by level of education were obtained from Spain’s National Institute of Statistics. Health prevalences were estimated from the National Health Survey for Spain. We used Sullivan’s method to compute HLE, ULE, and the proportion of time lived with health problems. Our results reveal that Spanish women live longer than men in all education groups, but a higher proportion of women report poor health. We detect substantial differences in unhealthy life by gender and education, with higher effect for women and for those with low levels of education. Poor self-perceived health shows the largest educational gradient; chronic diseases present the lowest. This is the first work that provides evidence on health inequalities by education level in Spain. Our findings seem to be in line with reports of the smaller social inequalities experienced in Southern Europe and highlight the importance of education level on extending the proportion of years spent in good health in a Mediterranean country.This study belongs to the multicountry project “Care, Retirement and Wellbeing of Older People across Different Welfare Regimes” (CREW). The authors acknowledge funding from the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (PCIN-2016-005) within the second Joint Programming Initiative “More Years Better Lives” and to the Socio-Demographic Consequences of the Great Recession: Altered Class and Gender Relations? (RECECON) Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, CSO2016-80484-R. Financial support was also received from the Catalan Government under the CERCA Program and the FACTAGE, PCIN-2015-249 project