Stable marital histories predict happiness and health across educational groups

Miika Mäki, Anna E. Hägglund, Anna Rotkirch, Sangita Kulathinal and Mikko Myrskylä
Additional contact information
Mikko Myrskylä: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany

No WP-2022-035, MPIDR Working Papers from Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany

Abstract: Couple relations are a key determinant of mental and physical well-being in old age. However, we do not know how the advantages and disadvantages associated with partnership histories vary between socioeconomic groups. We create relationship history typologies for the cohorts 1945-1957 using the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe, and examine, for the first time, how relationship histories relate to multiple indicators of well-being by educational attainment. Results show that stable marriages co-occur with higher well-being, compared to single and less stable partnership histories. All educational groups experience clear and similar benefits from stable unions. The adverse outcomes of union dissolution are more pronounced for those with lower education. The larger drawbacks on well-being among the less educated, especially among men, suggest that those with fewer resources suffer more from losing a partner. The findings underscore that current and past romantic relations predict well-being in old age and help policymakers in identifying vulnerable subgroups among the aging population. Keywords: partnership history, cumulative disadvantage, health, quality of life, aging

JEL-codes: J1 Z0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-dem, nep-eur and nep-hap
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.demogr.mpg.de/papers/working/wp-2022-035.pdf (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:dem:wpaper:wp-2022-035

DOI: 10.4054/MPIDR-WP-2022-035

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPIDR Working Papers from Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Wilhelm ().