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82 Genus 1 (2026)

handle is hein.journals/genus82 and id is 1 raw text is: Calder6n-Jaramillo etal. Genus (2026) 82:1 https://doi.org/10.1186/s41118-025-00279-8 Between curing and caring: years of life expectancy with care needs (YLCN) in Ibero- American countries Mariana Calder6n-Jaramlllo ,Jeroen Spijker2 , Elisenda Renteria - and Luciana Correia Alves3 *Correspondence: Mariana Calderon Jaramllo mcalderon@ced.uab.es Centre d'Estuds Demografics (CED), nver tat Autonoma de Barcelona, Cerdanyola del Valle Spain 'Unvers*tat Internacional de Cata unya, Barce ona, Span 3Departamento de Demografia, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciencias cumana cnpver dade Eitadual de Campinas Campinas Brazi Springer Abstract Unprecedented gains in life expectancy call for a nuanced understanding of morbidity and its consequences on social care needs. Despite the observed worldwide gender gap in life expectancy and healthy life expectancy, we still do not know how these longer years women are living are affected by social care needs, nor whether there are cross-country differences in this regard. This study measures the Years of Life Expectancy with Care Needs that individuals are expected to live at age 60, combining (multi)morbidity and social care needs states. By decomposing the gender gap in life expectancy without care needs across five Ibero-American countries (Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Portugal, and Spain), it also explains the differences between men and women in this regard. Results reinforce the health- survival paradox, with women living longer lives and more years in states of multimorbidity and social care needs than men. They also show that in all countries but Spain, the gender gap in years without care needs implies that men are living, on average, longer years than women without healthcare and social care needs. By using an indicator that combines measures of healthcare and social care needs, this study aims to contribute to the evidence required to prepare healthcare systems and social care policies according to ageing populations'specific dynamics and needs. Keywords Social care needs, Multimorbidity, Healthy life expectancy, Ibero-America, Ageing Introduction Unprecedented gains in life expectancy have, for decades, raised questions about indi- viduals' health during the additional years they are expected to live (Crimmins, 1984; Robine et al., 2009). Evidence regarding whether life expectancy improvements are matched by better health outcomes remains mixed (Vaupel, 2010). Nevertheless, pop- ulation ageing necessitates an understanding of the needs of older individuals, which are particularly relevant for policymakers in charge of guaranteeing the sustainability of healthcare and social care systems, challenged by expected increasing care demands and persistent limited resources for care provision (Khan et al., 2024). In a scenario ŠThe Author(s) 2026.Open Access This article is licensed undera Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this artide are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit httpy,creativecommons.org/licens es/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Genus ORIGINAL ARTICLE Open Access