this is also part of the project developed at @demographyvienna.bsky.social.

because it is very common for researchers and institutes to use gender gaps as markers for inequality, we raise the awareness that gender gaps in healthy life expectancy as a metric for gender inequality in health is misleading.

We find that countries with very different levels of development, healthcare systems and gender roles can have similar gender gaps, but substantial differences in the levels of mortality and health.

We show results for 24 countries and regions, including the USA, England, South Korea, China, India, Mexico and 19 European Union countries for the years 2014–2015 and 2017–2019, using harmonised Gateway to Global Aging Data for chronic disease and disability