BACKGROUND
Previous research that examines gender differences in health does not rigorously assess the gender-related differential ‘exposure’ and differential ‘vulnerability’ hypotheses; i.e., does not try to identify the ‘direct’ (unmediated) effect of gender or quantify the relative importance of different risk factors for each gender.

OBJECTIVE
I test the hypothesis that gender differences in health (self-assessed health (SAH) and psychological distress (PD)) are due to indirect or mediating effects via socioeconomic and behavioural factors, and are not a direct effect of gender on health.

METHODS
Data (N = 18,030) from the third wave of the Survey of Family, Income and Employment (SoFIE) and multivariate logistic regression analyses are used to test gender differences in SAH and psychological distress.

RESULTS
The analyses show that women are less likely to report poor self-assessed health but more likely to report moderate-to-high psychological distress. Differential exposure of men and women to the determinants of health did not completely account for gender differences in health. Gender-specific differences in vulnerability were found only in the direct effects of age, and employment status.

CONCLUSIONS
These results suggest that much, but not all, of the association between gender and health is mediated by socioeconomic factors.



中文翻译：

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新西兰成年人自我报告的健康和心理困扰的性别差异（作者：Santosh Jatrana）

背景
先前检查健康方面性别差异的研究并未严格评估与性别相关的差异“暴露”和差异“脆弱性”假设；即，不尝试确定性别的“直接”（非中介）影响或量化每个性别不同风险因素的相对重要性。

目的
我检验这样一个假设，即健康方面的性别差异（自我评估健康 (SAH) 和心理困扰 (PD)）是由于社会经济和行为因素的间接或中介效应，而不是性别对健康的直接影响。

方法
来自第三波家庭、收入和就业调查 (SoFIE) 的数据 (N = 18,030) 和多变量逻辑回归分析用于测试 SAH 和心理困扰的性别差异。

结果
分析表明，女性报告自我评估健康状况不佳的可能性较小，但更有可能报告中度至高度的心理困扰。男性和女性对健康决定因素的不同暴露并不能完全解释健康方面的性别差异。仅在年龄和就业状况的直接影响中发现了脆弱性的性别特异性差异。

结论
这些结果表明，性别与健康之间的大部分（但不是全部）关联是由社会经济因素介导的。