Health Consequences of Later-life Marital Dissolution: The Role of Marriage Order

Jiaxin Shi , University of Wisconsin-Madison

The rise of the divorce rate in the older population has led to an increasing scholarly interest in the health consequences of later-life marital dissolution. Thus far, little is known about the potential heterogeneity in the effects of later-life marital dissolution. Compared to young couples, older married adults are more diverse in marital history, which may moderate the effects of marital dissolution on health. In particular, do health consequences of marital dissolution depend on marriage order? I attempt to answer this question by applying fixed-effects models to the Health and Retirement Study in 1998-2016. The results show that widowhood, but not divorce, has negative effects on men’s physical and mental health, and the effects are smaller for higher-order marriages. For women, both widowhood and divorce have negative effects on their physical and mental health, and the effect size of widowhood is larger than that of divorce. The widowhood effect on women’s physical health is smaller when the marriage is of higher order, but this pattern does not hold for women’s mental health. Further, divorce increases alcohol consumption more for men than for women, and the interactive effect of marriage order is only found for men.

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 Presented in Session P1. Postercafe