Spousal Educational Attainment and Sleep Duration Among American Older Adults

Premature aging among trauma survivors—the longitudinal implications of sleep disruptions on telomere length and cognitive performance

Connor Sheehan, Masumi Iida and Deborah S Carr

The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 2021, vol. 76, issue 5, 1015-1026

Abstract: ObjectivesSleep has consistently been shown to have a dyadic nature among married older adults; however, less is known about the influence of a spouses’ social characteristics on one’s own sleep. Focusing on older adults, we examined the association between one’s spouses’ educational attainment and one’s own sleep duration.MethodWe used the 2004–2018 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) to analyze heterosexual married adults aged 50–84 (N = 89,180). Respondents reported typical sleep duration in a 24-hr period, which was categorized as short (≤6 hr), normal (7–8 hr), or long (≥9 hr). We fit multinomial logistic regression models predicting these categories of sleep duration and accounted for demographic, household socioeconomic characteristics, and health/health behaviors. Using interaction terms, we tested if the association varied by the respondent’s gender and educational attainment.ResultsOlder adults married to spouses with college or more education had significantly lower relative risk of short sleep than those whose spouses had some college, high school, or less than high school education, net of the covariates including their own education. The benefit of higher levels of spousal education was significantly more protective against short sleep for women and more highly educated older adults.DiscussionOlder adults married to spouses with high levels of education reported more favorable sleep durations, but this benefit was significantly stronger for women and the highly educated which has important implications for their aging. These findings suggest that social inequality may condition the dyadic nature of sleep for heterosexual married older adults.

Keywords: Gender; Marriage; Multinomial logistic models; National Health Interview Survey (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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The Journals of Gerontology: Series B is currently edited by Psychological Sciences - S. Duke Han, PhD and Social Sciences - Jessica A Kelley, PhD, FGSA

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