'Mauritian women live longer than men,' says Statistics Mauritius

05 Août 2020

Port Louis, Mauritius, August  5 (Infosplusgabon) – Mauritian women live longer than men by some 6.5 years, as life expectancy for women is 77.7 years compared to 71.2 years for men in the island, Statistics Mauritius said on Wednesday.

In its latest bulletin, it said life expectancy at birth has improved over the years for both men and women and over the past eight years, the gap between life expectancy of men and women has decreased from 7.3 years in 2010 to 6.5 years in 2019.

It said in 2019, there were 13,377 more women than men with the population of women being 639,544 against 626,167 men.

Statistics Mauritius underlined that women continue to give birth to fewer children than in the past, stating that compared to 1992, the average number of children born to a woman dropped by nearly one child to reach a total fertility rate of 1.4 from 2013 to 2019.

It said while marriage rate is declining, divorce rate is on the rise with the marriage rate, which is the number of persons married per 1,000 mid-year population, falling from 21.1 in 1993 to 15.3 in 2019. The number of divorced persons per 1,000 mid-year population increased from 1.4 in 1993 to 3.4 in 2019.

Detailing the figures for health, it said since October 1987 when the first cases of HIV/AIDS were registered, the number has been increasing and reached 7,795 in December 2019, of whom 26.6 % were women.

Though women are more numerous than men in the population, there are fewer deaths among women than among men. In 2019, 6,124 men compared to 5,050 women died.

The risk of a woman dying as a result of pregnancy or childbirth during her lifetime has generally been declining over the years with slightly higher level of maternal deaths in recent years.

Statistics Mauritius found that women continue to be underrepresented in decision-making position in Government with the share of women among cabinet ministers being 12.5% in 2019 (3 out of 24 Ministers).

It said even though the proportion of women elected at Municipal Council elections has increased over the years, the number of female mayors remained low. In 2019, out of the five municipalities, only one had a female mayor.

There has been an increase in the proportion of women holding senior positions in government services from 19.2% in 1999 to 40.0% in 2016. However, in 2019 the proportion of women in the most senior positions was 39.1%.

FIN/ INFOSPLUSGABON/PLM/GABON2020

© Copyright  Infosplusgabon