McKinsey Health Institute
Closing the Women’s Health Gap: Harnessing a $1 Trillion Opportunity
Women spend 25% more time in poor health than men.
Per 100 capita, women spend 12 years lived with disability vs. nine years for men.
What are the underlying reasons for the women’s health gap?
- Limited understanding of sex-based differences
- Constrained access to sex-appropriate care
- Data gaps resulting in women’s health burden being undercounted
- Low investment limited scale of innovation
More than half of the women’s health gap affects women during their working years, which significantly impacts global GDP.
- Additional healthy life years lived in 2040 in disability-adjusted life year (DALY) millions:
- An average of 60% of additional healthy life years are gained in the working age group (20s to 60s).
- Women’s incremental GDP impact by 2040 by age group, GDP impact in $ billions:
- An average of 80% of the GDP impact is generated in the working age group (20s to 60s).
The majority of DALYs stem from conditions which impact women differently or disproportionately.
- Total global women’s health burden – breakdown of conditions, 2019, % of total global DALYs:
- 5% are related to women-specific conditions (e.g., menopause)
- 4% are related to conditions that affect women differently (e.g., cardiovascular disease)
- 47% are related to conditions that affect women disproportionately (e.g., autoimmune disease, migraines)
- 43% are conditions for which there is no current evidence that women are affected disproportionately or differently (e.g., leukemia)
Closing the gap could generate more than $1 trillion annual GDP by 2040.
Closing the women’s health gap requires action on six fronts:
- Increase awareness of the women’s health gap
- Enhance access to sex-appropriate care
- Systematically collect and analyze sex-, ethnicity-, and gender-specific data
- Close research gaps in women’s health
- Increase funding and incentivize new financing models
- Supporting policies that will advance women’s health
1 Global Burden of Disease (2019)
2 Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation 2019, used with permission, all rights reserved; Oxford Economics; ILOSTAT; OECD; Eurostat; National Transfer Accounts project; McKinsey Health Institute analysis
3 McKinsey analysis based on the Global Burden of Disease (2019)
4 World Bank population data (2019)
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