Health, Leisure, and Life Cycle: A Gender Approach in the Tropics

Costa Rican women make use of more types of medicines than men, which is partially explained by females higher incidence of stress-related symptoms, multiple roles, and little leisure time. These results are based on 2003, 2004, and 2005 surveys on medication use in Costa Rica. It adds a new country case to the broad existing literature on gender and health, which makes the existing hypotheses more robust and provides insights for future research.