Women have consistently lower mortality rates than men at all ages and with respect to most causes. However, gender differences regarding hospital admission rates are more mixed, varying across ages and causes. A number of intuitive metrics have previously been used to explore changes in hospital admissions over time, but have not explicitly quantified the gender gap or estimated the cumulative contribution from cause-specific admission rates. Using register data for the total Danish population between 1995 and 2014, we estimated the time to first hospital admission for Danish men and women aged 60. This is an intuitive population-level metric with the same interpretive and mathematical properties as period life expectancy. Using a decomposition approach, we were able to quantify the cumulative contributions from eight causes of hospital admission to the gender gap in time to first hospital admission. Between 1995 and 2014, time to first admission increased for both, men (7.6 to 9.4 years) and women (8.3 to 10.3 years). However, the magnitude of gender differences in time to first admission remained relatively stable within this time period (0.7 years in 1995, 0.9 years in 2014). After age 60, Danish men had consistently higher rates of admission for cardiovascular conditions and neoplasms, but lower rates of admission for injuries, musculoskeletal disorders, and sex-specific causes. Although admission rates for both genders have generally declined over the last decades, the same major causes of admission accounted for the gender gap. Persistent gender differences in causes of admission are, therefore, important to consider when planning the delivery of health care in times of population ageing.

在所有年龄和大多数原因方面，女性的死亡率始终低于男性。然而，关于住院率的性别差异更加复杂，因年龄和原因而异。许多直观的指标以前被用来探索住院率随时间的变化，但没有明确量化性别差距或估计特定原因入院率的累积贡献。使用 1995 年至 2014 年间丹麦总人口的登记数据，我们估计了 60 岁丹麦男性和女性首次入院的时间。这是一个直观的人口水平指标，具有与经期预期寿命相同的解释和数学特性。使用分解方法，我们能够量化八种入院原因对首次入院时间的性别差距的累积贡献。1995 年至 2014 年间，男性（7.6 至 9.4 岁）和女性（8.3 至 10.3 岁）的首次入院时间均有所增加。然而，在此期间，首次入院时间的性别差异幅度保持相对稳定（1995 年为 0.7 年，2014 年为 0.9 年）。60 岁以后，丹麦男性因心血管疾病和肿瘤的入院率一直较高，但因受伤、肌肉骨骼疾病和特定性别原因的入院率较低。尽管在过去的几十年里，男女的录取率普遍下降，但同样的主要原因是导致性别差距的主要原因。入院原因的持续性别差异是，