You make me sick: marital quality and health over the life course.
We work from a life course perspective and identify several reasons to expect age and gender differences in the link between marital quality and health. We present growth curve evidence from a national longitudinal survey to show that marital strain accelerates the typical decline in self-rated health that occurs over time and that this adverse effect is greater at older ages. These findings fit with recent theoretical work on cumulative adversity in that marital strain seems to have a cumulative effect on health over time-an effect that produces increasing vulnerability to marital strain with age. Contrary to expectations, marital quality seems to affect the health of men and women in similar ways across the life course.
Department of Sociology and Population Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, 78712-1088, USA. umberson@mail.la.utexas.edu
Debra
D
Umberson
Kristi
K
Williams
Daniel A
DA
Powers
Hui
H
Liu
Belinda
B
Needham
D003625:Data Collection; D005260:Female; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D008393:Marriage; D012737:Sex Factors; D014481:United States