Marital Life Course Research Articles

Educational Assortative Mating and Income Dynamics in Couples: A Longitudinal Dyadic Perspective

The question of how educational assortative mating may transform couples' lives and within‐family gender inequality has gained increasing attention. Using 25 waves (1979–2012) of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 and longitudinal multilevel dyad models, this study investigated how educational assortative mating shapes income dynamics in couples during the marital life course. Couples were grouped into three categories—educational hypergamy (wives less educated than their husbands), homogamy, and hypogamy (wives more educated than their husbands). Results show that change in husbands' income with marital duration is similar across couples, whereas change in wives' income varies by educational assortative mating, with wives in educational hypogamy exhibiting more positive change in income during the marital life course. The finding that husbands' long‐term economic advancement is less affected than that of wives by educational assortative mating underscores the gender‐asymmetric nature of spousal influence in heterosexual marriages.

Serial Cohabitation and the Marital Life Course

Using cohort data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, this paper tracks the experiences of serial cohabitors. Results indicate that only a minority of cohabiting women (about 15% – 20%) were involved in multiple cohabitations. Serial cohabitations were overrepresented among economically disadvantaged groups, especially those with low income and education. They also were less likely than single‐instance cohabiting unions to end in marriage rather than dissolve. If serial cohabitors married, divorce rates were very high — more than twice as high as for women who cohabited only with their eventual husbands. The results suggest the need to balance the government’s current preoccupation with marriage promotion with greater support of “at risk” unions that marriage promotion initiatives have helped create.

When Unwed Mothers Marry

The promotion of marriage and two-parent families as a strategy to reduce welfare dependency continues to be a major public policy goal of the 1996 welfare reform. Based on the assumption that women will marry employed men and that their earnings will lift poor mothers and their children from public dependency, this objective raises important policy questions. In this article, the authors investigate the extent to which unwed mothers—a large proportion of all welfare mothers—enter into and maintain stable cohabiting and marital relationships with economically attractive men. Using retrospective data on relationship histories for 3,872 women from the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth, the authors examine the marital life course of unwed mothers and document the social and economic characteristics of their partners at midlife. Their marital search model shows that nonmarital childbearing is adversely associated with the ability to marry economically attractive men and maintain long-term marital unions.

The Persistence of Wives’ Income Advantage

Recent reports using cross‐sectional data indicate an increase in the percentage of wives who outearn their husbands, yet we know little about the persistence of wives’ income advantage. The present analyses utilize the 1990 – 1994 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (N= 3,481) to examine wives’ long‐term earnings advantage. Although a significant minority of women outearn their husbands in 1 year, considerably fewer do so for 5 consecutive years. The presence and persistence of wives’ income advantage vary by demographic characteristics, economic and human capital measures, and over the individual and marital life course. The findings suggest caution in interpreting women’s relative economic gains as signaling absolute progress toward eliminating gender inequality within marriages.

Gender, the Marital Life Course, and Cardiovascular Disease in Late Midlife

Drawing on 5 waves of the Health and Retirement Study, we examine the influence of the marital life course on the prevalence and incidence of cardiovascular disease among 9,434 middle‐aged individuals. Results show that compared to continuously married persons, both men and women with a marital loss have significantly higher prevalence of cardiovascular disease at baseline. Men and women, however, differ in the effects of marital loss on the incidence of cardiovascular disease over the course of the study. Women with a marital loss have a higher risk of cardiovascular disease in late midlife compared to continuously married women, whereas marital loss is not associated with men’s risk of cardiovascular disease. Emotional distress and socioeconomic status account for the higher risk of cardiovascular disease among divorced women.

Marital life course events and smoking behaviour in Sweden 1980–2000

The protective effect of marriage on smoking has been extensively established in the literature. However, less is known about the dynamics of how smoking behaviour is connected to various marital life course events, and whether there are any gender discrepancies in this respect. In this article the connection between the marital life course and smoking is analysed from a stress-related perspective controlling for other socio-economic characteristics. We use information on 81,000 individuals from the Swedish longitudinal micro-level ULF (Survey of Living Conditions) database 1980–2000, which is randomly drawn from the sample population of all Swedes aged 16–84. Logistic regressions on current smoking status and changes in smoking behaviour of participants in the panel part of the data are estimated. The marital life course is strongly linked to smoking behaviour with being or getting married indicating low smoking risks and marital disruption indicating high risks. The divorced smoke to a higher extent than the widowed and there are signs that getting divorced implies higher risks than becoming widowed, both of taking up/relapsing and, for women, not being able to quit. Further, the results indicate that the connection between smoking cessation and living with a partner is stronger for men, whereas women are more affected by the propensity to start smoking after marital disruption. The protective effect of being married on smoking decreases with the age difference between spouses in households where the wife is older than the husband. Taken together, the results yield a rather complex pattern of smoking behaviour over the marital life course. Further, perceived financial stress is strongly connected to smoking and not being able to quit. Controlling for this effect still leaves a socio-economic status gradient in smoking.

Time-Dependent Effects of Wives' Employment on Marital Dissolution

The specialization and trading model-the dominant theoretical perspective on marital stability-posits a positive effect of wives' economic independence on the risk of divorce. Prior evidence for this association is mixed, however. This analysis explores the possibility that the effect of wives' labor force supply and educational attainment on marital dissolution varies across historical periods and across the marital life course. Event-history analyses of data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics for 3,523 married couples observed between 1969 and 1993 reveal that the impact of wives' employment on marital dissolution has become increasingly positive, Moreover, as marriages age, the positive effect of wives' employment on divorce becomes stronger and the negative impact of wives' education becomes weaker, Possible explanations for these varying effects include the development of institutional supports for unmarried working mothers, the increasing adoption of nontraditional gender-role ideologies, and trends in workplace sex segregation

Time-Dependent Effects of Wives’ Employment on Marital Dissolution

The specialization and trading model—the dominant theoretical perspective on marital stability—posits a positive effect of wives’ economic independence on the risk of divorce. Prior evidence for this association is mixed, however. This analysis explores the possibility that the effect of wives’ labor force supply and educational attainment on marital dissolution varies across historical periods and across the marital life course. Event-history analyses of data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics for 3,523 married couples observed between 1969 and 1993 reveal that the impact of wives’ employment on marital dissolution has become increasingly positive. Moreover, as marriages age, the positive effect of wives’ employment on divorce becomes stronger and the negative impact of wives’ education becomes weaker. Possible explanations for these varying effects include the development of institutional supports for unmarried working mothers, the increasing adoption of nontraditional gender-role ideologies, and trends in workplace sex segregation.

Health Consequences of Marriage for the Retirement Years

Greater numbers of persons will enter retirement outside of marriage or with a checkered marital history. Given the traditional health benefits of marriage, these changes in the population's marital life course may foretell changing demands for eldercare in addition to adverse health consequences. Here, the authors provide new evidence on the specific aspects of health associated with marriage for a nationally representative survey of retirement age adults. An important aspect of the authors' analysis is the assessment of whether the benefits of marriage hold equally for women and men, major race/ethnic groups, and persons with different marital histories. Data from the Health and Retirement Survey are used to evaluate how marriage is associated with major chronic illnesses, functional limitations, and disability. Findings document that marriage benefits health across a broad spectrum of fatal and nonfatal chronic disease conditions, functioning problems, and disabilities. Moreover, benefits of marriage are widely shared across demographic groups.

Marital Quality of Black and White Adults Over the Life Course

This paper tests family development and life-course perspectives in explaining marital quality over the course of marriage for black and white adults. The sample of 1430 adults (1097 white, 333 black) in their first marriage was from a 1986 national survey. As expected, positive marital quality (satisfaction and interdependence) had significant curvilinear patterns across length of marriage but only satisfaction showed the characteristic U-shape with a dip in the middle years which is consistent with a family life-cycle explanation. Furthermore, family structure variables did not eliminate this pattern, although family financial factors reduced it to marginal significance. Negative marital quality (discord and spouse negative behavior) had significant negative linear patterns over the marital life course, which were unaffected by family life-cycle variables. All four patterns were similar for blacks and whites, except that blacks had a stronger negative linear association between negative marital quality and marriage length. Marital quality was significantly lower among blacks on all measures; kin relation and status inequality variables did not eliminate this difference. The results suggest that marital quality is better explained by a life-course perspective than by the family development model.

Marital Quality Over the Life Course

Much prior research in social psychology indicates that in many domains of social life, individuals' well-being improves in the latter half of the life course. The reason for this pattern is not well understood, however. We argue that objective changes in family composition and in social and economic conditions in middle and later life may explain the later-life increase in well-being. To test this argument we focus on one domain, marital well-being, and examine the curvilinear relationship between marital duration and marital quality, with emphasis on the latter half of the marital life course. Our results show that reduced work and parental responsibilities in later life explain much of the later-life increase in marital satisfaction but do not account for the decrease in thoughts of divorce. Longitudinal research is needed to confirm our results, which are necessarily confined to cross-sectional data.

Nonmarital Cohabitation and Childbearing among Black and White American Women

Previous studies have suggested that there are racial differences in the role of cohabitation in the family-formation process. This study provides an empirical analysis of this issue by examining the childbearing behavior of approximately 733 black and 2986 white cohabiting and married [U.S.] women at two stages in the marital life course. The results indicate that for both first unions and first postmarital unions the rate of childbearing within cohabitation more closely approximates the rate of childbearing within legal marriage among black women than white women. In fact among black women in first postmarital unions cohabitors and the legally married are equally likely to have a birth. In addition among white women the likelihood of a birth among relatively disadvantaged cohabitors is closer to that of legally married women than is the likelihood of a birth among more advantaged cohabitors. Overall it appears that cohabitation is most similar to legal marriage as a setting for childbearing among black women and relatively disadvantaged white women. (EXCERPT)

Determinants of Divorce over the Marital Life Course

Using data from the young and mature women samples of the National Longitudinal Survey, this paper examines how the determinants of divorce (and separation) vary by the duration of marriage. In general, we find little evidence that the strength of previously identified predictors of divorce varies by marital duration. Variables such as race, wife's labor force participation, husband's employment, and urban residence seem to influence the probability of divorce, irrespective of the stage in the marital life course. The principal exception to this finding is the effect of wife's education, which appears to decrease the probability of divorce at early marital durations but to increase it at later durations. There is also suggestive evidence that the effects of home ownership and age at marriage may vary by marital duration. Demographic trends frequently shape research interests, and current trends are no exception. Increased attention from both demographers and sociologists is being focused on aging, the life course, and divorce. The source of interest in divorce is clearcut, since recent projections suggest that close to half of recent marriages will end in divorce (Preston and McDonald, 1979; Cherlin, 1981). Interests in aging and the life course probably stem at least in part from the aging of the population, with projections of up to 18 percent over age 65 by the year 2030 (Soldo, 1980). This concern may also be due to the aging of the baby boom generation, which has captured public attention, and which is now beginning to experience mid-life crises (Preston, 1984). While both areas of research are expanding at a prodigious rate, they have done so for the most part independently. Of course, demographers have long studied age/time-related determinants of divorce, such as age at marriage, marital duration, and life-cycle characteristics such as presence of children. Recent research (Morgan and Rindfuss, 1985; Thornton and Rodgers, 1984) has attempted to sort out the effects of these highly related variables. However, these analyses have focused almost solely on the age variables, and have not addressed the larger picture of how the divorce process may vary over the life course.

Interrelationships between fertility and marital dissolution: Results of a simultaneous logit model

Previous studies have failed to examine (a) the simultaneity of decisions to bear children and to dissolve a marriage and (b) the effects of the childbearing in the period just before dissolution on the likelihood of disruption. We attempted to resolve both problems by developing a simultaneous logit model of the interrelationship between the probability of separation and of having a birth during this period (when dissolution presumably is being considered). The model was estimated at successive durations of first marriage, using data for white women in the 1970 National Fertility Survey. The results indicate that childbearing patterns--number of children and age of youngest child at the beginning of the marital interval being studied and fertility during the interval--did not influence the likelihood of separation in simple or consistent ways over the marital life course, nor did marital strife (as indicated by separation) seem to affect childbearing throughout marriage.