Psychological Well-Being Among Older Adults: The Role of Partnership Status

Overview

Journal J Marriage Fam

Date 2017 Jun 20

PMID 28626245

Citations 25

Authors

Matthew R Wright

Susan L Brown

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Today's older adults are increasingly unmarried. Some are in cohabiting unions, others are dating, and many remain unpartnered. Unmarried older adults are at risk of poorer well-being than the married, but it is unclear whether older cohabitors fare worse than or similar to their married counterparts. Nor have well-being differences among cohabitors, daters, and unpartnered persons been considered. Conceptualizing marital status as a continuum of social attachment, data from Waves I and II of the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project are used to examine how older married, cohabiting, dating, and unpartnered individuals differ across multiple indicators of psychological well-being. Among men, cohabitors appear to fare similarly to the married, and better than daters and the unpartnered. In contrast, there are few differences in psychological well-being by partnership status for women.

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