Seetha Menon
DKK 2.346.480
Independent Research Fund Denmark (DFF)
Do men and women react differently to an adverse health shock? - Gender Differences in Healthcare Utilization
While generally in worse health at older ages as compared to men, women tend to live longer lives than men. Notwithstanding inherent biological factors, this malefemale health-survival gap is often attributed to gender differences in individual healthcare utilisation and health behaviours. Despite this, there is no clear causal evidence on how men and women differ in their healthcare utilization or in their health behaviours when faced with an unexpected adverse health shock. Exploiting exogenous variation in the timing of an adverse health shock proxied by an unpredictable adverse cardiovascular shock, this project will contribute compelling empirical evidence of gender differences in healthcare utilization and health behaviour. Causal estimates of the difference in healthcare utilisation between men and women has the potential to inform policy makers and health practitioners to tailor policy and medical practice towards narrowing this male-female health-survival gap.