**4. Discussion**

The paper aims to examine the age and sex pattern of morbidity and its linkage with summary measures of health such as DALY and DFLE. India is also experiencing a similar epidemiological transition along with demographic transition. It is observed that during transition period, the age pattern of mortality and morbidity will be altered [16]. There has been a significant transition in age pattern of morbidity in India. A comparison of this study with other previous studies' findings suggests that the age-specific communicable and non-communicable diseases have increased over the last 20 years' time. The increase in the rate of non-communicable disease was much higher. With the increase in age, prevalence and odds of suffering from non-communicable diseases increase significantly. The risk of noncommunicable diseases increases from middle-aged adults to elderly population among males, and for females, the risk of having non-communicable diseases was significantly higher among the elderly age group. This finding supports the previous studies' findings that communicable diseases are more likely to occur in the younger ages while non-communicable diseases occur in the elderly population [17, 18].

The study further shows that the prevalence of self-reported non-communicable morbidities and disabilities was higher among females than their male counterparts in each age group and communicable. Gender gap in health and mortality exists all over the world. The unequal utilization of health care is the major factor that leads to uneven health disparity. Various reasons for differential morbidity are kinship system, gender ideologies, poverty, nutritional status, socio-economic condition, level of education and violence [19, 20]. The age pattern of the disease also suggests that the prevalence of communicable and non-communicable diseases was higher among the females, but the gender gap was not apparent in disability.

In order to understand the burden of communicable and non-communicable disease for male and female population in India, we calculated the disabilityadjusted life year. The result shows that the burden of communicable disease was higher in infant males compared to infant females in India during 2014. In medical terms, it is seen that male children are more biologically weaker than female children and thus are more prone to various diseases and spend a larger amount of time fighting for the disease [21]. Contrary to the prevalence sex pattern, DALYs for non-communicable diseases in each age group were higher for males as compared to the females. The burden of non-communicable disease was more prominent in higher age group (60 years and above) of population across both sexes. The result also shows that the adult working age male and female population (15–59 years) contributes half of the total DALYs in non-communicable diseases, which is a serious cause of concern. The socio-economic impact of this morbidity and disability due to non-communicable diseases is enormous since these deaths often affect the main income earner in the household and those who rear those children [22].

The DFLE result shows that elderly 70 years and above are spending more than one-third of their life in disability. Further, females spend more life suffering from disability as compared to males. Due to higher life expectancy among females in the later ages, females spend more suffering years. The previous study for the earlier decade also suggests that the gender inequalities in DFLE are more evident in India and other low- and middle-income countries [23].
