Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T09:46:59.117Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Sex differences in healthy life expectancy from self-perceived assessments of health in the City of São Paulo, Brazil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2008

MIRELA CASTRO SANTOS CAMARGOS ,
CARLA JORGE MACHADO  and
ROBERTO NASCIMENTO RODRIGUES
MIRELA CASTRO SANTOS CAMARGOS
Affiliation:
Department of Demography, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
CARLA JORGE MACHADO*
Affiliation:
Department of Demography, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
ROBERTO NASCIMENTO RODRIGUES
Affiliation:
Department of Demography, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
*
Address for correspondence: Carla Jorge Machado, Av. Augusto de Lima, 1376/sl. 908. Belo Horizonte, MG, Cep: 30190-003, Brazil. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Whether life is spent in good health or disability has a critical influence on the use of health-care services. It is also known that average healthy life expectancy differs by sex. This paper reports estimations of healthy and unhealthy life expectancy in old age using self-reported health assessments for the City of São Paulo, Brazil in 2000–01. The data derived from the Health, Well-being and Aging in Latin America and the Caribbean Project (SABE), and from population censuses and mortality statistics. Sullivan's estimation method was used. It combines the age-specific schedule of the current probabilities of death with the prevalence of self-perceived ‘poor’ and ‘good’ health. The paper also reports multivariate analyses of the factors associated with variations by age group and sex in self-perceived health. The findings revealed that, at all ages, women live longer than men and for more years in a healthy state. Among men, those aged 60, 65 and 70 years were expected to live a higher percentage of their remaining life than women in a healthy state, but among those aged 75, 80 and 85 years, the opposite held. Among women, the percentage of remaining years that were unhealthy did not increase as age increased, which differs from previous findings. The multivariate analyses showed that with increasing age, for women the number of chronic diseases decreased but dependency increased, and for men the opposite held. This finding indicated that the percentage of life spent in poor self-perceived health more accurately predicts mortality in men than women.

Keywords

health life expectancyself-perceived healthelderlySullivan method
Type
Research Article
Information
Ageing & Society , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , January 2008 , pp. 35 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Agree, E. M. 1999. The influence of personal care and assistive devices on the measurement of disability. Social Science and Medicine, 48, 4, 427–43.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Alves, L. C. and Rodrigues, R. N. 2005. Determinantes da autopercepção de saúde entre idosos do Município de São Paulo, Brasil. Pan American Journal of Public Health, 17, 5–6, 333–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Appels, A., Bosma, H., Grabauskas, V., Gostautas, A. and Sturmans, F. 1996. Self-rated health and mortality in a Lithuanian and a Dutch population. Social Science and Medicine, 42, 5, 681–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bailis, D. S., Segall, A. and Chipperfield, J. G. 2003. Two views of self-rated general health status. Social Science and Medicine, 56, 2, 203–17.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Baron-Epel, O. and Kaplan, G. 2001. General subjective health status or age-related subjective health status: does it make a difference? Social Science and Medicine, 53, 10, 1373–81.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Benyamini, Y., Leventhal, E. A. and Leventhal, H. 2000. Gender differences in self-assessment of health. Psychosomatic Medicine, 62, 4, 354–64.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bossuyt, N., Gadeyne, S., Deboosere, P. and Van Oyen, H. 2004. Socio-economic inequalities in health expectancy in Belgium. Public Health, 118, 3–10.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Idler, E. L. and Benyamini, Y. 1997. Self-rated health and mortality: a review of twenty-seven community studies. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 38, 1, 21–37.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Imai, K. and Soneji, S. 2007. On the estimation of disability-free life expectancy: Sullivan's method and its extension. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 102, forthcoming.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jagger, C. 1999. Health Expectancy Calculation by the Sullivan Method: A Practical Guide. NUPRI Research Paper 68, Population Research Institute, Nihon University, Tokyo.Google Scholar
Jylha, M., Guralnik, J. M., Ferrucci, L., Jokela, J. and Heikkinen, E. 1998. Is self-rated health comparable across cultures and genders? Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences, 53, 3, S144–52.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kaplan, G. A. and Camacho, T. 1983. Perceived health and mortality: a nine-year follow-up of the human population laboratory cohort. American Journal of Epidemiology, 117, 3, 292–304.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Langley, R. L. 2003. Sex and Gender Differences in Health and Disease. University of North Carolina Press, Durham, North Carolina.Google Scholar
Lebrão, M. L. and Duarte, Y. A. O. 2003. O projeto SABE no Brasil: uma abordagem inicial [The SABE Project in Brazil: An Initial Appraisal]. Organização Pan-Americana da Saúde, Brasília.Google Scholar
Machado, C. J. 2002. Early Infant Morbidity and Infant Mortality in the City of São Paulo, Brazil: A Probabilistic Record Linkage Approach. Unpublished Ph.D dissertation, Department of Population Dynamics, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland.Google Scholar
Martikainen, P., Aromaa, A., Heliövaara, M., Klaukka, T., Knekt, P., Maatela, J. and Lahelma, E. 1999. Reliability of perceived health by sex and age. Social Science and Medicine, 48, 8, 1117–22.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Martínez-Sánchez, E., Gutiérrez-Fisac, J. L., Gispert, R. and Regidor, E. 2001. Educational differences in health expectancy in Madrid and Barcelona. Health Policy, 55, 3, 227–31.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mathers, C. D. and Robine, J. M. 1997. How good is Sullivan's method for monitoring changes in population health expectancies? Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 51, 1, 80–6.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ofstedal, M. B., Zimmer, Z., Cruz, G., Chan, A. and Lin, Y. 2003. Self-assessed Health Expectancy Among Older Asians: A Comparison of Sullivan and Multistate Life Table Methods. Research Report 03–60, Population Studies Center, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan.Google Scholar
Peláez, M., Palloni, A., Albala, C., Alfonso, J. C., Ham-Chande, R., Hennis, A., Lebrão, M. L., Leon-Diaz, E., Pantelides, A. and Pratts, O. 2003. Survey on Aging, Health and Wellbeing, 2000. Pan American Health Organization, Washington DC.Google Scholar
Prager, E., Walter-Ginzburg, A., Blumstein, T. and Modan, B. 1999. Gender differences in positive and negative self-assessments of health status in a national epidemiological study of Israeli aged. Journal of Women and Aging, 11, 4, 21–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Portrait, F., Maarten, L. and Degg, D. 2001. Life expectancies in specific health states: results from a joint model of health status and mortality of older persons. Demography, 38, 4, 525–36.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Preston, S. H., Heuveline, P. and Guillot, M. 2000. Demography: Measuring and Modeling Population Processes. Blackwell, Malden, Massachussets.Google Scholar
Romero, D. E., Leite, I. C. and Swarcwald, C. L. 2005. Healthy life expectancies in Brazil: applying the Sullivan method. Reports in Public Health, 21, Supplement, S7–S18.Google ScholarPubMed
Sullivan, D. F. 1971. A single index of mortality and morbidity. (Health Services and Mental Health Administration) HSMHA Health Reports, 86, 4, 347–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
United Nations Organisation (UNO) 2002. World Population Ageing 1950–2050. UNO, New York.Google Scholar
Valkonen, T., Sihvonen, A. and Lahelma, E. 1997. Health expectancy by level of education in Finland. Social Science and Medicine, 44, 6, 801–8.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Weidner, G. 2000. Why do men get more heart disease than women? An international perspective. Journal of American College Health, 48, 6, 291–4.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zimmer, Z. 2005. Active Life Expectancy and Functional Limitations Among Older Cambodians: Results from a 2004 Survey. Working Paper 201, Population Council, New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar