Marital status and mortality: the role of health.
Prior literature has shown that married men live longer than unmarried men. Possible explanations are that marriage protects its incumbents or that healthier men select themselves into marriage. Protective effects, however, introduce the possibility of adverse selection: Those in poor health have incentive to marry. In this paper we explore the role of health in explaining mortality and marriage patterns, and distinguish protective effects from two types of selection effects. We find adverse selection on the basis of health (unhealthy men tend to (re)marry sooner) and positive selection on the basis of unmeasured factors that both promote good health and encourage marriage.
Lillard
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Center for the Study of Aging, RAND, Santa Monica, CA 90407-2138, USA. lee-lillard@rand.org
Panis
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D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D015984:Causality; D002648:Child; D002755:Choice Behavior; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D016013:Likelihood Functions; D016014:Linear Models; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D017533:Marital Status; D008875:Middle Aged; D009026:Mortality; D016016:Proportional Hazards Models; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D013997:Time Factors; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology