Beyond Marital Status: Partner History and Well-Being in Old Age

Abstract

Applying a life course perspective to the relationship between well-being and partner status suggests that the well-being of older adults is not only influenced by their current marital status, but also by aspects of their partner history. Life history data from a recent Dutch survey are used to examine the relationship between partner history variables and loneliness (n = 3,390). Older adults who are currently not involved in a partner relationship are lonelier than older adults with a partner. Furthermore, loneliness increases with the number of union dissolutions that older adults have experienced and decreases with the time elapsed since the last dissolution. No differences in loneliness are found between widowed and divorced older adults. The loss or lack of a partner is more detrimental for males than for females. These differences remain after controlling for age, health, network size, income, and educational attainment. This suggests that it is difficult to compensate for the lack or loss of relationshipspecific benefits of having a partner, especially for males. Key Words: life course, loneliness, marital status, partner relationships, gender. One well-established finding in the literature on well-being is that marked differences in subjective well-being exist between categories of marital status, both in the general population and among older adults in particular. For instance, the married report higher levels of well-being than the unmarried with respect to happiness (Glenn & Weaver, 1988), morale (Balkwell, 1985), mental health (Gove, 1972; Hughes & Gove, 1981), life satisfaction (Acock & Hurlbert, 1993; Strain & Chappel, 1982), and loneliness (De Jong Gierveld, 1987; Perlman, 1988). Among the unmarried, older adults who have never been married, especially women, seem to fare better than the divorced and widowed (Dykstra, 1990, 1995; Essex & Nam, 1987; Lawton, Moss, & Kleban, 1984). The favorable well-being of married people is usually explained by stressing the importance of having a partner for the fulfillment of basic human needs and the provision of resources (Bowlby, 1969; Chappel & Badger, 1989). Those who are not married are differentiated on the basis of whether or not they have been married in the past, and if so, whether that marriage was dissolved by divorce or by the death of the spouse. Here, attention is usually focussed on the devastating effects of losing one's partner, be it through divorce or widowhood (Balkwell, 1985; Ferreiro, Warren, & Konanc, 1986). The focus on marital status implies an explicit emphasis on some aspects of the partner history of people, at the expense of other aspects that might be important as well, especially with respect to older persons' well-being. In recent years, proponents of the life course perspective (Elder, 1994; Moen, Dempster-McClain, & Williams, 1989, 1992; Stroebe, Stroebe, & Hansson, 1993) have stressed that paying attention to these other aspects of people's partner history, for instance the type, number and duration of unions, could enhance our understanding of the importance of intimate relationships for people's well-being. If well-being is related to living full time with a partner rather than to being married, people in alternative relationship arrangements, such as cohabitation or a close relationship with a person outside the household, should show levels of well-being comparable with those of married people. Furthermore, given the serious emotional consequences of losing one's partner (Balkwell, 1985), it is questionable whether these consequences can be completely counterbalanced by entering a new relationship. Therefore, remarried people could be less well off than people in their first marriage. Research among the divorced and widowed suggests that well-being increases with the time elapsed since the last dissolution (Ferreiro et al.,1986). It is not clear, however, to what extent the negative impact of losing one's partner increases with the number of union dissolutions the divorced and widowed have experienced. …