About the research
The goal of improving the health, safety, and well-being of our elderly citizens has prompted renewed interest in ageing research. The findings of this study add to the discussion.
In the research literature, the ‘misery’ perspective and ‘comparative disadvantage’ paradigm hold that women self-report poorer health than men in old age. Few ageing research studies of the mid-to-late twentieth century focus on gender. Of the few, most studies were conducted at specific points in time. As a result, the findings cannot indicate whether ‘comparative disadvantages’ for women exist and, if they do, to what extent this may have changed over time.
This longitudinal research explores the self-reported health changes and gender differences among UK men and women, aged 65 and older.
The results reveal that gender difference in self-reported health have declined across cohort groups and over time, even when considering age structure changes. The decline in gender difference of self-reported health was marked for those born between 1921 and 1940. Furthermore, compared to the 1970s and 1980s, the difference between males and females dropped in the early 1990s to an insignificant level in the 2000s. The results contrast with the conventional understanding of the ‘comparative disadvantage’ paradigm of older women in the literature and demonstrate that historical timing is a crucial factor to take into account when studying relationships between gender and ageing.
Methodology
Logistic regression was used to analyse the time-series data of the General Household Survey/General Lifestyle Survey, from 1977 to 2004. The dependent variable is the self-reported health on the whole in the last 12 months before the time of interview. Independent variables include gender, cohort and time.
Publications
Suen, Y. T. (2011) ‘Do older women or older men report worse health? Questioning the “sicker” older women assumption through a period and cohort analysis’, Social Theory & Health 9, 71–86.