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The role of public policies to reduce the gender inequalities in health of our elderly

Some results obtained with the financial help of Junta de Castilla y León. Grant: VA112G19.

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We studied the quality of life of the elderly in European countries through the construction of a synthetic indicator that takes into account information related to four different areas such as control, autonomy, pleasure and self-fulfillment, in a similar way to the CASP-12 indicator, but using the DP2 methodology that admits including different weights for each area.

Among the results, we found:

The quality of life of the elderly in Europe is closely related to their level of studies, their income and their health.

Nordic and Continental European countries are those with the best levels of quality of life, while Mediterranean countries, such as Spain, obtain worse results than Eastern European countries.

In any case, a gender gap penalizes the results of older women in terms of quality of life.

Figure: Quality of life indicator:

gráfico El papel de las políticas públicas en la reducción de las desigualdades de género en salud de nuestros mayores
Source: Own elaboration from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE).