Health and life conditions of older people within Latin American countries: are differences expressions of inequities in health?.

ACOSTA, LAURA DÉBORA; ROJAS CABRERA, ELEONORA; FANTÍN, MARÍA ALEJANDRA

Cape Town

Conferencia; XXVIII International Population Conference.; 2017

IUSSP

Life expectancy in Latin America has increased significantly since 1950, mainly as a result of medical and public health interventions. Longer lives have combined with lower fertility to produce deep shifts in the age composition of country populations: As people live longer and women have fewer children, older people have begun to represent a growing proportion of the total population in the region (Scommegna & Lee, 2014). However, in Latin American countries, poverty and inequity continue being an important problem; consequently people aging in the region, but maybe not in the best conditions of life and health. Countries like Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Colombia, Cuba, México and Uruguay are in an advanced stage of demographic transition in terms of current levels of fertility and mortality (UN/ECLAC, 2008). But, when using demographic data aggregated at the level of individual countries often hide significant internal variations; for example, large socioeconomic disparities between rural and urban areas or between different regions of the same country are usually reflected in demographic variations. Richer areas may enjoy higher life expectancy and lower fertility, leading to above-average rates of ageing (Lloyd-Sherlock, 2000).For this reason, many inequalities in the health of older people hide, in fact, inequities in health. Term inequality in health indicates differences between the health of individuals and groups. On the other hand, inequity in health is a specific kind of inequality related to unfair differences in health, in other words, when differences in health are preventable and unnecessary, for example, differences in health related to ethnicity, race, gender or socio-economical disadvantages (Arcaya et al, 2016).This paper proposes to answer: there are differences in life expectancy and other health indicators, at the interior of Latin American countries with an advanced stage of demographic transition? These differences are increasing or decrease in the last years? and, these differences are unfairness inequalities, in other words, are expressions of inequities in health of elderly people? AimTo analyze inside differences in health status of people of 60 years and older; in selected Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil and México), observe their evolution; and related the differences with health inequities, between 2000 to 2015.