Age and the gender gap in distress

Area of Science:

• Sociology
• Psychology
• Public Health

Background:

• Women report higher psychological distress than men, with a potential increase in this disparity with age.
• This widening gap is theorized to stem from cumulative disadvantages in women's work and family roles.
• Social stress theory and cumulative disadvantage hypothesis provide frameworks for understanding these gender differences.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if chronic stress exposure increasingly explains the gender effect on psychological distress as individuals age.
• To determine if women exhibit increasing vulnerability to the effects of chronic stress on distress with age.
• To examine the role of chronic stress in understanding age-related gender differences in distress.

Main Methods:

• Utilized data from the 1994 Canadian National Population Health Survey (N = 13,798).
• Analyzed a national probability sample of women and men aged 20 and older.
• Employed statistical models to assess the interaction between age, gender, and chronic stress on psychological distress.

Main Results:

• Contrary to the cumulative disadvantage hypothesis, the model's explanatory power for gender differences in distress decreased with age.
• Exposure to long-term stress did not increasingly account for gender differences in distress in older age groups.
• No evidence of increased gendered vulnerability to the effects of long-term stress on distress was found in the sample.

Conclusions:

• The study's findings challenge the cumulative disadvantage hypothesis regarding age-related gender differences in psychological distress.
• Chronic stress exposure does not appear to progressively widen the gender gap in distress with age.
• Further research is needed to understand the complex interplay of social structures, subjectivity, and health disparities.