Measuring the capability of living a healthy life with fuzzy logic in a gender perspective

The capability of living a healthy life can be considered a key dimension in the construction of individual well-being. It is itself the outcome of a complex sets of indicators including also subjective indicators. This paper measures health at individual level by using fuzzy logic to keep the complexity of its definition while providing a crisp indicators of the level of health that can be disaggregated in relevant intermediate variables. The system has been implemented on Italian Istat survey on health conditions and the results show a higher gender inequality in the level of health than it can be obtained by using traditional techniques to measure health. We do find that controlling for age, still women are characterized by poorer health conditions. Data disaggregated by regional area show variability in the outcome that can be connected to the different policies enacted across regions.