Straight Platform Politics

Marriage and Marital Loss Affect Mid-Life Health – Part 4

The Findings: the unmarried

An article by Mary Elizabeth Hughes and Linda J. Waite, recently published in the journal of the American Sociological Association, examines marriage, marital loss, and mid-life health. The findings suggest that a person’s current health in mid-life reflects not only the effects of the person’s current marital state but also the effects of the person’s marital biography. See Part 3

The authors compared those who were previously married but were not currently married with those who were currently married. They found that the previously married have “significantly worse health than the currently married.” The previously married reported more chronic conditions, more mobility limitations, and poorer self-rated health and showed more symptoms of depression.

Those who had never married, when compared to the currently married, reported more mobility limitations, worse self-rated health, and more depression symptoms. However, there were no differences in the number of chronic conditions reported by this group and the currently married.

The previously married (those not remarried) fared worse than those who had never married at   all.

Debbie Mandel, stress management specialist: A good marriage is like making a deposit in your health savings account for midlife and the golden years. (Health Behavior News Service 07/27/09)

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Marriage and Marital Loss Affect Mid-Life Health – Part 3

The Findings: the currently married

The article “Marital Biography and Health at Mid-Life” by Mary Elizabeth Hughes and Linda J. Waite was recently published in the journal of the American Sociological Association. The findings suggest that a middle-aged person’s current health reflects not only the effects of the person’s current marital state but also the effects of the person’s marital biography. See Part 2

One finding was that marital loss damages a person’s health years later in life even if the person remarries. This strongly supported the authors’ hypothesis that health in mid-life is linked to marital transitions as well as to current marital status.

Comparing the currently married, those who were continuously married had better health than those who had experienced a loss but later had remarried. The remarried showed poorer health than the continuously married on all the various health aspects examined by the authors. These were: number of chronic conditions, number of mobility limitations, self-rated health, and depression symptoms.

Mark Hayward, professor at University of Texas at Austin Department of Sociology: “There’s no erasure of the effects of divorce…Think of divorce as one of the most intense stressors… You’re not going back to your original set point.” (CNN.com 07/28/09)

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Marriage and Marital Loss Affect Mid-Life Health – Part 3

The Findings: the currently married

The article “Marital Biography and Health at Mid-Life” by Mary Elizabeth Hughes and Linda J. Waite was recently published in the journal of the American Sociological Association. The findings suggest that a middle-aged person’s current health reflects not only the effects of the person’s current marital state but also the effects of the person’s marital biography. See Part 2

One finding was that marital loss damages a person’s health years later in life even if the person remarries. This strongly supported the authors’ hypothesis that health in mid-life is linked to marital transitions as well as to current marital status.

Comparing the currently married, those who were continuously married had better health than those who had experienced a loss but later had remarried. The remarried showed poorer health than the continuously married on all the various health aspects examined by the authors. These were: number of chronic conditions, number of mobility limitations, self-rated health, and depression symptoms.

Mark Hayward, professor at University of Texas at Austin Department of Sociology: “There’s no erasure of the effects of divorce…Think of divorce as one of the most intense stressors… You’re not going back to your original set point.” (CNN.com 07/28/09)

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Marriage and Marital Loss Affect Mid-Life Health – Part 2

The Theory

The article “Marital Biography and Health at Mid-Life” by Mary Elizabeth Hughes and Linda J. Waite was recently published in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, a journal of the American Sociological Association. Hughes and Waite propose that a middle-aged person’s current health reflects not only the effects of the person’s current marital state but also marital history. See Part 1

Theoretically, the connection between a person’s marital life story (biography) and health shows two different effects: a status effect and a transition effect. Status effects come from the long-term benefits/costs of being in a certain marital state for a certain length of time. Research literature has repeatedly shown that married people experience better health than the unmarried because marriage has financial, emotional, and social benefits.

Transition effects show the long-term influence of marital changes such as divorce and widowhood. Research literature also has demonstrated that the continuously married experience better health than the remarried, the previously married, and the never married. Thus, for a person in mid-life, state of health reflects both status and transition effects of that person’s marital biography.

National Institutes of Health: Almost half of all U.S. marriages end in divorce.

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Marriage and Marital Loss Affect Mid-Life Health – Part 1

The Research

The article “Marital Biography and Health at Mid-Life” was recently published in the September issue of Journal of Health and Social Behavior. The research tested several hypotheses concerning long-term effects of people’s marital history, i.e. marriages and marital losses, on their current mid-life health.

Mary Elizabeth Hughes, assistant professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Linda J. Waite, professor at the University of Chicago Department of Sociology, are the authors.

The data came from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a nationally representative study of people over the age of 50. The researchers used the 1992 HRS; study participants were 51 to 61 years of age when they were interviewed in 1992. The research analyses used sample sizes of 8,652 or 8,809 participants.

Hughes and Waite examined four aspects of health at mid-life: number of chronic conditions, number of mobility limitations, self-rated health, and depression symptoms. They studied how each is affected by marriage, non-marriage, divorce, widowhood, and remarriage.

Linda J. Waite: “Think of health as money in the bank. Think of a marriage as a mechanism for ‘saving’ or adding to health. Think of divorce as a period of very high expenditures.” (Health Behavior News Service, 07/27/09).

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