Strong sex weakens men consider themselves sicker than women

Health feeling: Men fall behind women

A few years ago, a study was published showing that women are significantly more ill than men. However, a new study now comes to the conclusion that the so-called strong gender is weakening. According to the researchers, men consider themselves sicker than women - especially in the east of the country.

German men feel sicker than women

A study of the health insurance DAK health showed a few years ago that the sick leave in women is higher than in men. However, some experts point out that men get sick more often than women. At least they feel sicker, as a new study of the social scientist Mine Kühn of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) in Rostock has now been established.

Shortly after reunification, men felt much healthier than women, both in the old and in the new federal states. But in the meantime, the representatives of the "strong sex" consider themselves sicker. (Picture: Picture-Factory / fotolia.com)

Gender relations have reversed

As the Institute reported in a communication, immediately after reunification in 1990 men in East and West felt much healthier than women.

But within the next 25 years or so, the perceived health differences between women and men have become smaller and smaller everywhere.

Finally, in 2013, men's self-esteemed health was even lower than that of women. According to the figures, women's lead in the East is more pronounced than in the West.

According to the study, gender relations have reversed since the end of the GDR.

The study results were recently published in the journal Social Science and Medicine - Population Health.

Self-perceived feeling says a lot about the feeling of life

According to Kühn, satisfaction with health is not only a good measure of actual health.

"The self-perceived well-being of the people at the same time says a lot about their attitude to life," says the scientist.

For her study, the researcher used data from the representative survey "Socio-Economic Panel" (SOEP), for which about 20,000 people in Germany regularly answer how satisfied they are with their state of health on a scale from zero ("very dissatisfied") to 10 ( "Very satisfied") are.

Kühn analyzed data for people between the ages of 20 and 59, who lived in their part of the country (East or West) during the entire study period from 1990 to 2013.

She differentiated according to the country part and the gender and calculated out influences such as income and education.

The result: The trend shows that especially men from East Germany over the time stated, to feel worse health.

Women are better able to deal with psychosocial stress

What could jokingly be perceived as the spread of "male flu" has a serious background for the study author:

"It is quite possible that the political and social changes since the fall of the Wall have caused so much stress especially for men in the East that their health - or at least their sense of health - has suffered sustainably."

For example, it is known that unemployment and continuing economic insecurity increasingly lead to unhealthy behavior such as alcohol consumption or smoking.

The fact that men are more affected than women can also be due to the fact that women generally have better abilities to deal with psychosocial stress, and in particular to benefit more from their social network in difficult times.

East German men became a "problem group"

While the East German men now have the worst perceived health values, East German women were right after the reunification.

MPIDR researcher Ms. Kühn believes that they may have suffered from the fact that immediately after the fall of power, jobs that typically occupy women were lost.

But over the years women seem to have recovered from such pressures, and the East German men have become a "problem group".

According to Kühn, this fits in with the changes in lifestyles that have been investigated in other studies: "East German women are now achieving similarly good scores for sports activity or alcohol consumption as West German women."

The men in eastern Germany, on the other hand, did not open up to those in the West in terms of a healthy lifestyle. They live as unhealthily as before the reunification any of the other population groups. (Ad)