Objective "From the 1960s to the 1980s a common wisdom about differences between males and females in health and mortality emerged which was summarised by the well-known phrase ""women are sicker, but men die quicker"". Recently this wisdom has been increasingly questioned. Nevertheless, the general idea of a paradoxical relationship between health and mortality among women and men persists until today. The purpose of this project is to decisively advance the understanding of the paradox by demonstrating that the reverse relationship between sex on the one side and health and mortality on the other is not as paradoxical as it seems. We hypothesise that two factors are mainly responsible for causing this intuitive contradiction. First, the overall reversal in sex morbidity and sex mortality differentials occurs because conditions that figure importantly in morbidity are not very important in mortality, and vice versa. Second, it is very likely that longevity is directly related to the absolute number of life years in ill health. Thus, women show higher morbidity rates not because they are female but because they are the sex with higher life expectancy. We will test these hypotheses in a ""natural experiment"" by analysing the relationship between health and mortality among Catholic nuns and monks from Austria and Germany in comparison to women and men of the general population. Cloister studies have a long scientific tradition and provided path-breaking knowledge for human medicine and demography, including the applicant s research during the last decade. This project follows the line of this tradition and will investigate the male-female health-mortality paradox in a longitudinal setting that is as close as one can get to an ideal long-term experiment in humans." Fields of science social sciencessociologydemographymortality Programme(s) FP7-IDEAS-ERC - Specific programme: "Ideas" implementing the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Community for research, technological development and demonstration activities (2007 to 2013) Topic(s) ERC-SG-SH3 - ERC Starting Grant - Environment and society Call for proposal ERC-2010-StG_20091209 See other projects for this call Funding Scheme ERC-SG - ERC Starting Grant Host institution OESTERREICHISCHE AKADEMIE DER WISSENSCHAFTEN EU contribution € 999 999,14 Address DR. IGNAZ SEIPEL-PLATZ 2 1010 Wien Austria See on map Region Ostösterreich Wien Wien Activity type Research Organisations Principal investigator Marc Luy (Dr.) Administrative Contact Inga Freund (Ms.) Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Total cost No data Beneficiaries (1) Sort alphabetically Sort by EU Contribution Expand all Collapse all OESTERREICHISCHE AKADEMIE DER WISSENSCHAFTEN Austria EU contribution € 999 999,14 Address DR. IGNAZ SEIPEL-PLATZ 2 1010 Wien See on map Region Ostösterreich Wien Wien Activity type Research Organisations Principal investigator Marc Luy (Dr.) Administrative Contact Inga Freund (Ms.) Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Total cost No data