Indigenous women have generally poorer health than Indigenous men, UBCO professor finds – CBC

Economist Min Hu’s research is based on self-reported health data from StatsCan’s Aboriginal People’s Survey

Aug 10, 2022

Indigenous women across Canada living off-reserve tend to have poorer physical and mental health than Indigenous men, according to research published by an economist at the University of British Columbia Okanagan campus (UBCO) in Kelowna.

In his research paper published in the Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities in April, UBCO economics professor Min Hu based his findings on data from Statistics Canada’s Aboriginal Peoples Survey — a national questionnaire conducted in 2001, 2006, 2012 and 2017 on the socioeconomic conditions of First Nations living off reserve lands, as well as Métis and Inuit.

Indigenous women and men each made up about half of the study’s sample of more than 86,000 people. Hu found that the gender disparity in health — in terms of the percentage of people who answered good, very good or excellent to questions on health status — widened over the years of the study, from a 1.5 per cent gap in 2001 to 5.3 per cent in 2012, dropping to 2.7 per cent in 2017.

Read More: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/indigenous-gender-health-gap-1.6546280