When does morbidity start? An analysis of changes in morbidity between 2013 and 2019 in Italy

Morbidity is one of the key aspects for assessing populations’ well-being. In particular, chronic diseases negatively affect the quality of life in the old age and the risk that more years added to lives are years of disability and illness. Novel analysis, interventions and policies are required to understand and potentially mitigate this issue. In this article, we focus on investigating whether in Italy the compression of morbidity is in act in the recent years, parallely to an increase of life expectancy. Our analysis rely on large repeated cross-sectional data from the national surveillance system passi, providing deep insights on the evolution of morbidity together with other socio-demographical variables. In addition, we investigate differences in morbidity across subgroups, focusing on disparities by gender, level of education and economic difficulties, and assessing the evolution of these differences across the period 2013–2019.