Gender Differences in Health in the Russian Federation: The Role of Lifestyles

Around the world, gender differences in health have revealed an important paradox: women report worse self-rated health than same-aged men, but are less likely to die at each age. This paradox is especially striking in the Russian Federation, where the gender gap in life expectancy currently exceeds 10 years, but where women still report to be in poorer health than same-aged men. This paper examines the paradox in Russia by decomposing the female disadvantage in poor self-assessed health and the male excess in one-year mortality using lifestyles. The results indicate that gender differences in lifestyles can explain almost 40% of the female disadvantage in poor self-assessed health: men's overall more moderate drinking behaviour, compared to women's more infrequent drinking behaviour, accounts for slightly more than half of this contribution, with men's apparently more favourable exercise and eating patterns, represented by the contributions of leisure-time exercise and Body Mass Index, accounting for the rest. In contrast , and although men's more frequent excessive alcohol use and high rates of smoking, on their own, seem able to potentially explain a considerable part (about 85%) of the male excess in one-year mortality, the combined differences in characteristics between men and women cannot explain the gender gap. Instead, the male excess remains almost completely unexplained. Perhaps the male excess can be explained by taking into account the underlying gender roles inherent in Russian society, something which future research should investigate.