Indian women outlive men. New research suggests they spend far less of that extra time financially secure, physically independent and cognitively healthy. Perhaps longevity is the wrong thing to celebrate.
Women live longer than men.
It is one of those facts about ageing that sounds reassuring until you ask a slightly less comfortable question:
Longer doing what?
A new Indian study offers a rather sobering answer.
Researchers from the International Institute for Population Sciences, Princeton University and the University of Vienna looked beyond conventional life expectancy and calculated something called ‘Years of Good Life’.
At 60, an Indian woman can expect to live another 19 years. But only 5.7 of them are expected to qualify as ‘good years’.
For men, remaining life expectancy at 60 is shorter, at 17.5 years. Yet they can expect 8.2 good years.
Women are winning longevity and losing quality. That is not much of a victory.
What Exactly Is A ‘Good Year’?
This is what makes the research particularly interesting.
A good year isn’t simply a year in which you haven’t been diagnosed with a serious illness.
To qualify, four things must be true simultaneously. You must be above the poverty line. You must be free of severe limitations that interfere with everyday activities. You must be free of cognitive impairment. And you must report positive life satisfaction.
It is an unusually sensible way to think about ageing because it recognises something women already understand intuitively: being alive and being able to live the life you want are not the same thing.
You can have controlled blood pressure and still be financially dependent. You can have money and struggle to get out of bed without assistance. You can be physically mobile and experience cognitive decline.
Longevity statistics flatten all of that into one impressive number.
The Gender Difference Is Difficult To Ignore
The study analysed data from more than 66,000 Indians aged 45 and above, combining the Longitudinal Ageing Study in India with national mortality data.
The researchers found substantial differences between men and women, and between rural and urban India.
An urban man turning 60 could expect around 10.2 good years. A rural woman? 4.6.
In Maharashtra, the picture was even more startling. Rural women at 60 could expect only about 2.7 good years, despite Maharashtra ranking highly on conventional measures of development.
That should make anyone in her 40s or 50s pay attention.
Not because these numbers predict your future. They don’t. These are population-level estimates, not personal expiry dates for independence.
But they reveal where disadvantage accumulates. And women appear to be carrying a great deal of it into old age.
Ageing Doesn’t Begin At 60
Sixty is where the researchers measured the outcome. It isn’t necessarily where the problem began.
The study found that men and women were losing good years for different reasons. For men, poor physical functioning played the largest role in differences across states. For women, cognitive health was the bigger factor.
Researchers point partly to something that happened decades earlier: education.
Women who had less access to schooling when they were young may enter later life with less cognitive reserve, the brain’s ability to withstand age-related change. States that invested earlier in girls’ education, including parts of southern India, now appear to be seeing some of the benefits among older women.
Which means a disadvantage experienced by a girl at 12 can still be visible in the life of a woman at 70.
Ageing, inconveniently, keeps receipts.
Money Is Part Of Healthy Ageing Too
We also need to stop treating ageing as an exclusively medical project.
A woman who reaches 70 with good knees but no independent income does not necessarily have a good quality of life. The researchers deliberately included poverty in their definition of a good year.
That matters enormously for women. Many Indian women now in their 40s and 50s have spent years earning, saving and managing household money while still treating retirement planning as something shared with, or delegated to, a spouse. Others have spent significant periods outside paid work while caring for children or family.
Healthy ageing therefore isn’t only: What is my cholesterol?
It is also: Do I know what I own? Will I have income that belongs to me? Could I pay for care if I needed it? Do I understand our retirement finances?
A SIP is not generally marketed as a health intervention. Perhaps, for women, we should think of financial independence as one.
Independence Is A Health Outcome
There is another useful shift in the research. It counts the ability to perform everyday activities independently.
Can you walk across a room? Dress yourself? Bathe without assistance? Move around your own home?
These are not glamorous wellness goals. Nobody is building an Instagram empire around the ability to get off the toilet independently at 78.
But this is what strength training, mobility, bone health and muscle preservation are ultimately for. The point of exercise in midlife is not simply a smaller body. It is a more capable older one.
This Is Not Another List Of Things Women Are Failing At
There is a danger here. Every new piece of ageing research somehow becomes another assignment for women.
Lift weights. Save more. Eat protein. Sleep better. Maintain friendships. Exercise your brain. Monitor your heart. Stay socially connected. Please also enjoy yourself.
At some point healthy ageing starts sounding like an unpaid second job.
That isn’t the lesson. Many of the inequalities in this research are structural. Education, poverty, healthcare access and where you live are not problems an individual woman can solve through better morning routines.
The useful part is understanding that healthspan matters more than lifespan. Living longer is only interesting if those years contain agency.
Perhaps 50 Is When We Should Start Asking A Different Question
Most conversations about ageing are still obsessed with extending life. How do we live to 90?
Maybe the better question for women in midlife is: What would I need at 70 to still feel that my life belongs to me?
A body that lets you move. A brain that remains engaged. Money you understand and control. People you want around you. A home you can navigate. Work, interests or responsibilities that give life structure. And enough independence to make choices rather than simply receive care.
None of us can guarantee those things. But they are a much more useful definition of ageing well than the number of candles on a cake.
Women already live longer. The next battle is making those extra years worth having.
Photographs via: Pexels | Used for represenational purposes only
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