The effect of relationship status on health with dynamic health and persistent relationships.
The dynamic evolution of health and persistent relationship status pose econometric challenges to disentangling the causal effect of relationships on health from the selection effect of health on relationship choice. Using a new econometric strategy we find that marriage is not universally better for health. Rather, cohabitation benefits the health of men and women over 45, being never married is no worse for health, and only divorce marginally harms the health of younger men. We find strong evidence that unobservable health-related factors can confound estimates. Our method can be applied to other research questions with dynamic dependent and multivariate endogenous variables.
Department of Economics and Business Studies, Drew University, 301 Lewis House, Madison, NJ 07940, United States. Electronic address: jkohn@drew.edu.
Jennifer L
JL
Kohn
Department of Economics, Lafayette College, Easton, PA 18042, United States. Electronic address: averetts@lafayette.edu.
Susan L
SL
Averett
D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D004243:Divorce / Q000191:economics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005191:Family Characteristics; D005260:Female; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D017533:Marital Status / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D008875:Middle Aged; D017059:Models, Econometric; D012847:Single Person / Q000706:statistics & numerical data
Dynamic panel data; Endogenous dummy variables; Health and marriage