Table 1_Gender equality and disease burden in 25 EU member states, 2006–2023: a fixed-effects panel analysis.docx

Whether within-country changes in gender equality are associated with the magnitude or composition of disease burden remains unclear, particularly in high-income settings.</p>Objective<p>To examine whether within-country changes in gender equality, measured by the Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI), were associated with age-standardized all-cause disease-burden magnitude and mortality–morbidity composition in 25 EU member states from 2006 to 2023.</p>Methods<p>This ecological longitudinal study used country-level panel data from 25 EU member states, yielding 450 country-year observations.

The GGGI was linked to Global Burden of Disease Study 2023 estimates of age-standardized DALY, YLL, and YLD rates and the YLL/YLD ratio. The main models were two-way fixed-effects regressions with country and year fixed effects, country-clustered standard errors, and adjustment for log GDP per capita, log health expenditure per capita, and mean years of schooling. Robustness was assessed using wild cluster bootstrap-t inference, Mundlak within–between decomposition, restriction to the pre-pandemic period, and alternative education and macroeconomic specifications.</p>Results<p>Within-country changes in the GGGI were not significantly associated with the two primary summary outcomes: the age-standardized total DALY rate (β = −19.1 per 0.01 increase; p = 0.575) or the YLL/YLD ratio (β = −0.0026; p = 0.296).