Gender Differentials in Disease Burdens
The global burden of disease for 2001 proportionally affects males slightly more than females. About 52 percent of DALY losses are attributed to males, but this proportion varies between 54.8 percent in Europe and Central Asia and 49.9 percent in South Asia. The only region where the global burden of disease affects females more than males is South Asia.
Table 10.1 shows the burden of disease by region, gender, and age group. The burden of disease during early childhood (age 0 through 4) is somewhat smaller for girls than boys; however, from age 5 through 29, females lose more DALYs than males, but only in developing countries. Larger differences favoring women appear starting at age 30 and continue until after the age of 70, when women, because of their greater longevity, lose more DALYs than men. However, when DALYs are estimated per 1,000 males and females as in table 10.1, women in the older age groups lose fewer DALYs than men both in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and in high-income countries (HICs).
[Table .]
Communicable diseases and maternal conditions contribute significantly to females' burden of disease in developing countries and add little to their burden in HICs, where noncommunicable diseases prevail in both women's and men's disease burden. Injuries weigh more heavily in males' than in females' burden of disease across regions. In summary, in both developed and developing countries, the overall burden of disease is higher for males than for females; however, this situation reverses in developing countries for young girls and women in their prime childbearing years. In addition, in LMICs, females are more affected than males by highly preventable communicable diseases.
