Gender equality and wellbeing amongst older people: a global age - - PDF document

Gender equality and wellbeing amongst older people: a global age watch comparison

Dr Rachel Bennett, University of Gloucestershire, UK (rbennett3@glos.ac.uk) Professor Asghar Zaidi, University of Southampton, UK (asghar.zaidi@soton.ac.uk) Abstract Drawing on the framework developed for the Global AgeWatch Index, this paper presents a gender disaggregated global analysis of the basic educational attainment of older people and the links between older people’s educational attainment, gender equality in older people’s educational attainment, and healthy life expectancy at age 60. Early findings show significant variation within geographic regions in the educational attainment of the current cohort of older men and women. Educational attainment is correlated with healthy life expectancy at age 60 for both genders and for women this persists after controlling for wealth (measured as GNI per capita PPP$). Further, for both men and women, healthy life expectancy at age 60 is correlated with the level of equality in educational attainment after controlling for wealth. The findings highlight the need for early life course interventions in improving the gender equality with respect to access to lifelong education. The Sustainable Development Goals as well as the International Conference on Population and Development Beyond 2014 Review present unparalleled opportunities to shape development agendas and prioritise the wellbeing of people of all ages and both genders. The emerging ageing and development discourse must place gender firmly on the agenda in order to fulfil global commitments to ‘leave no one behind’ and ‘reach the furthest behind first’. This paper will contribute to the evidence base supporting these international mandates. Keywords: Gender, Gender equality, Later life, Education and health.

Introduction The experience of ageing varies dramatically between men and women, as documented by a wealth

• f research on ageing and gender, predominately from the perspective of high income countries.

Cumulative gendered disadvantages in terms of socio-economic position, access to resources and roles and relationships through the life course have been shown to manifest in poorer outcomes for women in later life (Pratt, 1997, United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, 2009; Zaidi, Gasior, & Zólyomi, 2013). However, Knodel and Ofstedal (2003) amongst others have highlighted that a blanket assumption of a female disadvantage at older ages may be detrimental to supporting older people most in need and advocate the value of contextualised understandings of the role of gender in the ageing experience. Indeed, we are only starting to understand gendered experiences of ageing in low and middle income countries (Bennett and Zaidi 2016). Drawing on the framework developed for the Global AgeWatch Index, the first analytical framework to use quantitative data to present a multidimensional measure of the wellbeing of older people globally (Zaidi, 2013), this paper presents a gender disaggregated global analysis of the basic educational attainment of older people and the links between older people’s educational attainment, gender equality in older people’s educational attainment, and healthy life expectancy at age 60. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda go far further than their predecessors in tackling gender inequality and championing the position of older people. In particular, the commitment to disaggregating indicators by relevant characteristics in the monitoring of the SDGs will not only make it possible to highlight the position of older people relative to other adults, but also to monitor the inequalities within the group of older people. Yet, in the short term, it remains the case that age and gender disaggregated comparable data is scarce, curtailing our understanding of the experiences of older men and women globally. We focus exclusively on educational attainment, one

• f several wellbeing indicators in the Global AgeWatch Index, exactly because there is global country-

level data on this indicator disaggregated by both age and gender. Further, education is an important measure of older people’s coping capacity and enables individuals to accrue advantage across their life course. It also serves as a crucial proxy of people’s capability (Sen 1960). Education can bring improved livelihood opportunities, social, psychological and interpersonal benefits and improved health knowledge, literacy and behaviours (Ross and Wu, 1995, Clouston et al., 2017). The relationship between educational attainment and health have largely been explored by age and gender separately and at a micro level. This study attempts to look at both the country and the global level – how does gender relate to the education-health relationship specifically amongst older people across world regions? The findings of the paper relate to two strong pledges made in the 2030 Agenda of the Sustainable Development Goals: ‘leave no one behind’ and ‘reaching the furthest behind first’.

Data & methods The paper draws on country level data on educational attainment amongst individuals aged 60 years and older, healthy life expectancy at age 60 years and GNI per capita (PPP$) . Educational attainment is a binary variable for measured in terms of having secondary or higher education. Healthy life expectancy at 60 is the average number of years a person can expect to live in good health after their 60th birthday assuming age specific death rates remain constant. Each of these indicators are freely available by age and gender. Educational data is sourced from Barro-Lee (2010), and healthy life expectancy at 60 data is sourced from the Institute of Health Metrics (2015). The macro level data on GNI per capita come from the World Bank (2017). The analytic sample included 135 countries with complete data across the variables described above. Countries with missing data across the health and gender equality measures were disproportionally low-income countries, reflecting a broader challenge of data availability for ageing research globally, and particularly in developing countries. However, in total approximately three quarters of United Nations member States are represented in the analysis, thus it covers a large majority of countries. A measure of gender equality in older people’s educational attainment in each country was derived by dividing the geometric mean of older men and women’s educational attainment by the arithmetic mean and transforming the result to a scale between 0 and 1, where scores closer to 0 are indicative

• f lower levels of gender equality in older people’s educational attainment and scores closer to 1 are

indicative of higher levels of gender equality in older people’s educational attainment. This follows the methodology used to create the indicators in the UN’s Gender Equality Index (UNDP, 2014). A simple scatter plot was used to assess the level of educational attainment of older men and women and the crude difference between educational attainment of older men and women, coded by geographic region. Rankings by the measure of gender equality in older people’s educational attainment were presented on a map to illustrate geographic patterning. Subsequently, the association between gender specific educational attainment and healthy life expectancy at age 60 was assessed using a bivariate Pearson’s correlation coefficient. A correlation coefficient close to -1 is indicative of a strong negative correlation whilst a correlation coefficient close to 1 is indicative of a strong positive correlation. Pearson’s correlation was used rather than a non-parametric alternative because the assumption of linearity was met. Further, the assumption of normality is not relevant for this analysis because significance tests are not used as it is not sample data. In the second stage, partial correlation was used to assess the correlation between educational attainment and healthy life expectancy at age 60 controlling for the effect of GNI per capita. The correlation analysis was repeated

for exploring the association between the measure of gender education equality HLE60 of men and women respectively. Results Gender inequality in education Figure 1: Scatter plot of male vs female educational attainment amongst older adults by geographic region (Produced in STATA version 16) Figure 1 shows the educational attainment of older men against the educational attainment of older women, colour coded by geographic region. The solid line highlights the points where there would gender equality in educational attainment. As might be expected, in the majority of countries the educational attainment of older men outweighs the educational attainment of older women (points above the line). Educational attainment is particularly low in Africa and the female disadvantage is very acute for most countries in this region. Educational attainment is comparatively higher in Asia, 20 40 60 80 100 20 40 60 80 100

Carribean & Latin America Central Asia & Eastern Europe Africa Asia excluding Central Asia North America and Oceania Europe excluding Eastern Europe

Male educational attainment (% of males of with at least secondary level education) Female educational attainment (% of females of with at least secondary level education)

however there are very large gender disparities for most countries. In contrast, in the Caribbean and Latin America educational attainment is low but the gender disparity is minimal. Eastern Europe and Central Asia are presented as a separate region due to the high levels of educational attainment amongst older people in these countries. This relates to the legacy of the socialist era which means the current generation of both older men and women had very good access to basic education and thus have benefited from a similar level of basic education across their life course. The current cohort

• f older people in Northern America and Oceania have high levels of basic educational attainment and

gender differentials are minimal. The picture is more mixed in Europe: some countries have very high coverage of basic educational attainment and lower levels of gender disparity, whilst others have far lower levels of older people with basic education and greater differences between men and women. Figure 2: Global ranking for gender equality in the educational attainment of older people

Ranking

1-15 16-30 31-45 46-60 61-75 76-90 91-105 106-120 121-135 (Produced in MS Excel 2016) Figure 2 maps global rankings for the measure of gender equality in older people’s educational

• attainment. Africa includes countries with the poorest gender equality in older people’s educational

attainment, particularly countries in Central Africa. However, there is a significant amount of variation within the Africa region – for example, Southern African countries rank in the middle of the scale.

Whilst these countries do not necessarily have very high absolute levels of attainment, for example in South Africa 51% of older men and 44% of older women have basic education, the disadvantage for women is much smaller than for other countries in the region. There are also countries with very high levels of gender equality in older people’s educational attainment in Asia, but as expected Central Asia performs well. In Europe, Scandinavian countries do very well, whereas there is comparatively much lower gender equality in Southern Europe. Latin America and the Caribbean outperform regions of a similar income level with most countries in the top half or middle of the rank. Education, gender and health Figure 3: Correlation between healthy life expectancy at age 60 and older people’s education attainment by gender Figure 3 shows the correlation between healthy life expectancy at age 60 and older people’s educational attainment by gender. The first bars show the bivariate correlation coefficient: both men and women can expect to live more years in good health past their 60th birthday in countries where

• lder people of their respective gender have a higher level of educational attainment. The second bars

show the partial correlation coefficient, after accounting for the correlation between healthy life

• 0.1

0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7

Male HLE* Male EA Female HLE* Female EA Male HLE*Male EA (accounting for GNI) Female HLE*Female EA (accounting for GNI) Simple/partial correlation coefficient HLE: Healthy life expectancy from age 60 years EA: Educational attainment (% with at least secondary education) GNI: Gross National Income per capita, PPP$ (Produced in MS Excel 2016)

Simple/partial correlation coefficient

expectancy at age 60 and GNI per capita. Once the effect of country wealth is accounted for, there is no longer a correlation between older men’s educational attainment and men’s healthy life expectancy at age 60. However, whilst the equivalent analysis for women shows a weaker correlation

• nce GNI per capita is accounted for there is still a moderate positive correlation between educational

attainment and healthy life expectancy at 60, indicating that this association is not solely explained by wealth. Figure 4: Correlation between healthy life expectancy at age 60 and gender equality in older people’s education attainment by gender Figure 4 shows a similar analysis but instead of showing the correlation between gender-specific levels

• f educational attainment amongst older and healthy life expectancy at age 60, it looks at the

correlation between the level of gender equality in older people’s educational attainment and healthy life expectancy at age 60. Both men and women can expect to live more years in good health in countries with a greater level of equality between the educational attainment of older men and women, an association which is logically stronger for older women than for older men. This correlation is persistent after accounting for GNI per capita for both genders, indicating the relationship is robust across country income levels and is not simply reflecting a wealth effect. Further, it is evident that the correlation between gender equality in educational attainment and healthy life expectancy at age 60

0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7

Male HLE* Gender Educational Equality Female HLE* Gender Educational Equality Male HLE*Gender Educational Equality (acounting for GNI) Female HLE*Gender EducationalEquality (acounting for GNI) HLE: Healthy life expectancy from age 60 years EA: Educational attainment (% with at least secondary education) GNI: Gross National Income per capita, PPP$ (Produced in MS Excel 2016)

is stronger than the correlation between educational attainment level and healthy life expectancy at age 60 shown in figure 3. However, the correlation between gender equality in educational attainment and healthy life expectancy at age 60 reduces more dramatically for men than for women after accounting for GNI per capita. The bivariate correlation is approximately 50% stronger for women than for men, whilst the partial correlation accounting for GNI per capita is 200% stronger for women than for men. This indicates that women in particular fare better in countries with greater equality. There are strong policy implications for these findings, especially in recognising the need for early life course interventions in improving the gender equality with respect to access to lifelong education. Forthcoming analysis will (i) explore how these correlations vary by geographic region, to shed light

• n the gender, education and health relationship for older people in different parts of this world and

(ii) examine how educational attainment and gender equality in educational attainment has changed for future cohorts of older people, current 30-44 year olds and 45-59 year olds. Discussion There is significant geographic variation in both the level of older men and women’s educational attainment and the level of equality between older men and women’s educational attainment. Noticeable is (i) the level of variation within the regions Europe and Africa – older women in Southern Europe are far more disadvantaged relative to their male counterparts than older women in Northern Europe, whilst older women in Central Africa face much more disadvantage than older women in Southern Africa and (ii) the high levels of equality in older people’s education in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the high absolute levels of attainment and gender equality amongst older people in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The analyses of the gender-education-health analyses show older men and older women have poorer healthy life expectancy at age 60 in country contexts where a smaller proportion of their respective gender have basic education. For men, this association disappears once the effect of country wealth is accounted for – hence education appears to be just a proxy for wealth. However, for women there is still a moderate association between education and healthy life expectancy after accounting for

• wealth. This highlights the particular benefit of education for the wellbeing of older women, and

relates to analyses of individual level data looking at education-gender-health which suggests women have the most to gain because of their disadvantaged positioning in society (Ross et al., 2012). Older men and women have poorer healthy life expectancy in countries with lower levels of gender equality in basic educational attainment, an association is robust after accounting for wealth and

particularly strong for women. Hence across country income levels older people of both genders are enjoying longer healthy life expectancy in comparison to countries where men and women have enjoyed similar levels of the benefits and opportunities of education. This provides strong evidence for reducing gender inequalities and empowering and educating women and girls globally, and builds

• n existing literature which shows improving the status of women is beneficial for their families and

communities (Kar, Pascual, & Chickering, 1999; Schultz, 2002; Varkey, Kureshi, & Lesnick, 2009; Zaidi, 2014). The next steps will be (i) to explore further how the educational attainment-health relationship varies by geographic region and (ii) to review educational attainment and equality by gender of future generations of older people, the current middle aged and young adults so as to assess which regions and countries have achieved the greatest improvements in gender equality and where inequality will persist for future generations of older people. The 2030 Agenda of the SDGs have given us an unparalleled opportunity to shape international and national development agendas, with the wellbeing of people of all ages and of both genders at their

• core. The development discourse focused on the early life stages has long recognised the centrality of

gender equality and female empowerment to achieving its goals. The emerging ageing and development discourse must also place gender firmly on the agenda in order to fulfil our global commitments to ‘leave no one behind’ and ‘to reach the furthest behind first’. This paper will provide an important contribution to the evidence base supporting this agenda.

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