Despite lower life expectancy at birth, the presence of diseases, and shrinking household income, Nigeria has a health perception that is 67 percent higher than Japan, a global survey conducted by the McKinsey Health Institute has revealed.
At an average of 84 years, Japan has the highest life expectancy rate at birth among the 19 countries surveyed but its health perception is the lowest, with only 30 percent of its population rating their health as satisfactory. Nearly 90 percent of Nigerians rate their overall health as better.
The rating is formed in the context of multiple dimensions of health including physical, mental, social, and spiritual health.
The survey, which covered roughly 1,000 respondents in each country, showed that perception of health is not restricted to the presence or absence of diseases. More than 40 percent of all participants who reported having a disease still perceived their health as good or very good, indicating that people seem to be focused on how to live a full and functional life.
On the contrary, over 20 percent of individuals who reported no disease said they are in fair, poor, or very poor health. Also, about 25 percent of respondents who reported having a physical disease perceived their ability to accomplish physical tasks as high.
Health analysts suggest high cultural optimism and lower expectations from the government could have informed how Nigerians define their state of well-being, beyond physical health.
Femi Olugbile, a consultant psychiatrist, said some cultural and religious beliefs promote confession of wellness, even when there might be the presence of a health condition or the other.
According to him, many Nigerians are indisposed to revealing the true picture of their health status when asked and often have lower standards of expectation from the healthcare system when compared with a society like Japan.
“Even when people are ill, they think that they make things worse by talking about it. That is why in some cultures, it is assumed you are doing well. Japanese may not have cultural optimism,” Olugbile told BusinessDay.
Available data from the World Health Organization (WHO) shows that Nigeria had an average life expectancy of approximately 63 years as of 2019. South Africa had an average of 65; Egypt, 72; India, 71; Indonesia, 71; China, 77; Argentina, 76; and Brazil, 76.
According to the survey, respondents living in countries with greater life expectancy at birth did not necessarily consider themselves healthier.
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Apart from Japan, respondents from other countries with high life expectancy at birth such as 82 in Italy and 83 in Australia also had comparatively lower ratings for self-reported health.
An explanation the report gave is that respondents in countries with the highest levels of self-reported health often had the highest life-expectancy growth in recent years.
For example, in the past two decades, life expectancy grew by more than seven years in India and more than eight years in South Africa and Turkey.
“Although this finding warrants further investigation, it may suggest that improvement in living conditions contributes to higher perceived health than is reported in countries that have long had high life-expectancy rates,” the report said.
It also suggests that people do not always define themselves or feel constrained by their conditions and may be more focused on living their lives in accordance with what matters to them than on the presence or absence of disease.
Self-reported levels of health decreased with age, although not by much. Among those aged 18 to 24, 70 percent reported good or very good overall health, while approximately 60 percent of those aged 75 to 84 did so.
Meanwhile, older age groups recorded higher scores than younger groups did on some health dimensions, notably mental health. In 15 of 19 countries, a higher share of respondents aged over 65 rated their mental health as good or very good, compared with respondents younger than 24 who did so.
“This finding is consistent with some recent studies highlighting that members of Generation Z2 report lower mental health,” the report said.
In terms of income, within most countries, the more people earned, the higher their perceptions of their health. For example, approximately 60 percent of the highest-income respondents in Sweden rated their health as good or very good, compared with 35 percent of lowest-income respondents.
