GHELINE – Healthy lifespan inequality in men and women: Developing a framework to understand gender differences in healthy lifespans

Principal Investigator: Virginia Zarulli

Funder: project funded by the STARS@UNIPD 2025 call, with the support of Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Padova e Rovigo

Objectives:

While women live longer than men on average, they often grapple with poorer health; this is referred to as the male-female health-survival paradox. The causes and consequences of this paradox are a subject of vigorous debate and carry important social consequences.

GHELINE aims to comprehensively examine this paradox by analyzing global and European data on healthy longevity, identifying influences at various levels and developing mathematical analyses of healthy lifespan. The study goes beyond average healthy life to explore distributions, variabilities, and inequalities in healthy years of life among men and women.

This research is essential for understanding gender disparities in health, informing health system interventions, tracking progress in reducing gender health inequalities, influencing pension reforms, and contributing to social and economic stability.

The project consists of three working packages, addressing long-term trends, macro-level factors, micro and mezzo-level influences and mathematical formalization of the distributions of healthy years of life lived by men and women.

Duration: TBD