Greater life expectancy does not imply that lives are longer because of good health. This is indicated by Healthy Life Expectancy calculation, which subtracts the time spent on illness and poor health, and thus modifies the life expectancy figure. Women, who generally live longer than men, may do so at the price of health. Cardiovascular disease, lung disease, accidents, violence and suicide are the chief causes for the earlier deaths for men, and these give an advantage in terms of years to women’s lives. But the figures — 0.63 healthy years for women against heart disease for example, or 0.32 years against road injuries — are undercut by the bad health that especially women suffer from — pain, gynaecological illnesses and mental health problems. These modify the life expectancy figures for women by as much as 1.56 years in terms of the HALE calculation. It seems that the benefits of health that should have accrued to women because of medical advances have not increased in over 20 years. In 2023, the average life expectancy of men stood at 71 years and women’s at 76. But HALE showed that the difference was much less — men on an average lived 62 healthy years, and women 64.
The HALE figures point to the gendered nature of health issues. Women often suffer from chronic pain, a problem sometimes related to mental health, the nature of the different tasks women must carry out daily, nutrition and living conditions. Many conditions go untreated. In India, women’s health is seldom a priority in the household, or treated on an equal footing as that of the men in the family. More women suffer from anaemia in India than anywhere in the world. HALE acknowledges the measure of time lost through depressive disorders and anxiety, but habitual depression, frustration, suppressed hurt, continuous anxiety, even fear — intimate-partner violence, of which India has a very high rate, would cause this — destroy the quality of life that would ensure good health. The fact that men die earlier is itself a source of deep insecurity, anxiety, economic uncertainty and, sometimes, harder work for many women. Medical science is yet to address the complicated roots of women’s ailments, which can be a result of their mental and physical situation in everyday life, or caused by years of neglect.