Over the past two centuries, the rise in life expectancy—for both men and women—has been a tremendous success story. Global life expectancy increased from 30 years to 73 years between and But this is not the full picture. The authors acknowledge the importance of healthcare to the transgender, nonbinary, and gender-fluid communities and that not all people who identify as women are born biologically female. They also acknowledge the profound differences for women based on factors such as race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, disability, age, and sexual orientation.
The IHME Global Burden of Disease looks at mortality and disability, quantifying health loss from hundreds of diseases, injuries, and risk factors. The forecast includes diseases leading to death and poor health conditions such as infectious diseases and chronic conditions. Analysts quantified this health gap in terms of disability-adjusted life years DALYs and the extent to which this difference results from the structural and systematic barriers women face.
DALYs for a disease or health condition are the sum of the years of life lost YLLs due to premature mortality and the years lived with a disability YLDs due to prevalent cases of the disease or health condition in a population. To gauge how much the disease burden could be reduced, McKinsey thoroughly reviewed clinical evidence for the top 64 diseases affecting women, which account for nearly 86 percent of the global disease burden. This review focused on around interventions, based on guidelines from leading institutions such as the World Health Organization WHO and journals such as The Lancet.
Cases with limited adoption data and correlated assumptions are detailed in the technical appendix. To determine the potential economic effects of the proposed health interventions, analysts used population and labor force predictions up to These health gains were converted into labor force involvement, productivity, and economic gains through four avenues: fewer early deaths, fewer health conditions, extended economic capacity to contribute, and increased productivity.
The assumptions for estimating the impacts were based on academic studies and verified by experts. Critically, better health is correlated with economic prosperity. Addressing the gap could generate the equivalent impact of million women accessing full-time positions by This has the potential to lift women out of poverty and allow more women to provide for themselves and their families.
