Διαφορές γυναικών-ανδρών στις συμπεριφορές υγείας
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Gender health disparities persist in public health, with women often reporting poorer health outcomes despite longer life expectancy. This thesis examines how health behaviors explain gender differences in health outcomes in Greece during 2009-2019, using data from three waves of the National Health Survey of ELSTAT (22,520 individuals) and sequential covariate adjustment analysis to assess the role of smoking, alcohol consumption, physical activity and dietary habits. The results indicate that, in the raw models, women are about 3.0 percentage points more likely than men to report poor health. Once demographic, socioeconomic and behavioral factors are taken into account, this gap essentially disappears. Surprisingly, health behaviors explain only 5-10% of the gender disparity, despite men's higher engagement in risky behaviors like smoking (34.9% vs. 20.9%) and heavy drinking (14.7% vs. 2.9%). Instead, structural inequalities—particularly employment differences (44.8% vs. 27.4%), income distribution and educational level—account for most of the health gap. Mental health shows persistent gender disparities across all models, while the overall gender health gap narrowed from 5.3 percentage points in 2009 to 1.4 points in 2019 during Greece's economic crisis and recovery. These findings suggest that policies addressing employment, income inequality and educational access may be more effective at reducing gender health inequalities than focusing on individual lifestyle changes alone.
Source: Νημερτής
Author: Τασίκα, Αριάδνη Χριστίνα
Language: English
Topic: Sex and Gender in Healthcare
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7199620087