The relationship between health and partnership history in adulthood: insights through retrospective information from Europeans aged 50 and over

Abstract

The association between health and partnership status is a growing concern within the social sciences. Some partnership situations exhibit positive effects on health, while partnership breakdowns display negative impacts. However, case studies show that these associations may change with age, due to potential sources of heterogeneity within a population. The current analysis explored this association over the adult life course (ages 30-64) of Europeans aged 50 years and older based on retrospective information on health and partnership from SHARELIFE ( = 23,535 after data screening). The data allowed us to control for socio-demographic covariates as well as for individual infirmity, measured by childhood health. We also considered contextual survival selection effects by comparing 13 European countries for which pre-adult mortality levels largely differed among the cohorts involved (1907-1958). Discrete-time hazard analyses examined the risk of suffering from a major episode of poor health (self-reported) in adulthood as a function of partnership history, using two approaches: a pooled model and country-specific models. The results revealed no differences between those who lived with a partner (first union) and single individuals in terms of the retrospective hazards of poor health. We hypothesize that this result stems from the cumulative effect of survival selection on individuals in advanced ages according to partnership status. The results also partially point to the plausibility of a contextual survival selection, which should be confirmed by further research based on additional health indicators.

Stable marital histories predict happiness and health across educational groups

“…Thus, in contrast to studies using more crude measures of relationship histories and health (see e.g. Gumà et al 2014), our findings lend support for the associations between different partnership typologies and well-being. The findings also provided a more nuanced view on those in partnerships: stable second or higher-order marriages did not consistently seem to lower well-being, although the direction of the association was as expected.…”

“…Both cumulative advantage and disadvantage theories imply that the association between well-being and partnerships depends not only on the current status but also and perhaps in particular on the partnership history (DiPrete and Eirich 2006). Existing literature tends to focus either on single relationship events, such as marriage or divorce, or on static ways of depicting life course events that simplify partnership histories (Sassler 2010;Schütz 2019;Gumà et al 2014). A handful of studies have created partnership history trajectories to study later life outcomes (Zimmermann and Hameister 2019;Roberson et al 2018), andO'flaherty et al (2016) complement the relationship histories with fertility histories.…”

Early-life conditions and health at older ages: The mediating role of educational attainment, family and employment trajectories

“…The bulk of the literature on family histories and health has focused on a single aspect, such as, partnership [ 24 , 25 ] and fertility [ 5 , 6 ].…”

A revision and analysis of the comprehensiveness of the main longitudinal studies of human aging for data mining research

“…For instance, White investigates how depression‐related factors may shorten the lives of older adults. Several projects used the Cox Proportional Hazards Model, which is widely utilized in the analysis of survival rates. This model allows the identification of the independent variables that act more intensely when all variables are analyzed as a set.…”