Excess mortality by individual and spousal education for recent and long-term widowed

Objectives The loss of a spouse is followed by a dramatic but short-lived increase in the mortality risk of the survivor. Contrary to expectations, several studies have found this increase to be larger among those with high education. Having a spouse with high education is associated with lower mortality which suggests that losing a spouse with high education means the loss of a stronger protective factor than losing a spouse with low education. This may disproportionately affect the high educated because of educational homogamy. Methods We use Swedish total population registers to construct an open cohort of 1,842,487 married individuals aged 60 to 89 during 2007—2016, observing 239,276 transitions into widowhood and 277,946 deaths. We use Poisson regression to estimate relative and absolute mortality risks by own and spousal education among the married, recent, and long-term widows. Results We find an absolute increase in mortality risk, concentrated to the first six months of widowhood across all educational strata. The relative increase in mortality risk is larger in higher educational strata. Losing a spouse with high education is associated with higher excess mortality, which attenuates this difference. Discussion When considering the timing and the absolute level of excess mortality we find that the overall patterns of excess mortality are similar across educational strata. We argue that widowhood has a dramatic impact on health, regardless of education.

The Changing Spousal Differentials in Socio-demographic Characteristics in Malaysia

This paper uses matched couple data from the 1991, 2000, and 2010 population censuses to examine the changes in spousal differentials in age, education, and work status, as well as inter-ethnic and international marriages. The general trend is one of decreasing spousal age and educational gaps between 1991 and 2010. Although older-man younger-woman marriages still predominated, the spousal age gap decreased from 4.6 years to 3.9 years, and the proportion of marriages in which the husband was more than 6 years older than the wife declined from 30% to 24%. Educational homogamy (couples having the same educational level) rose from 53% to 64%, while the proportion of women marrying someone of higher education declined from 33% to 21%. Inter-ethnic marriage hovered around 4.2% throughout the study period, after rising from less than 1% in the 1980s. International marriages made up about 1.2% of all marriages in 2010, up from 0.8% in 1991. The labour force participation rate of married women had increased significantly, resulting in the rise of dual-income households. The changing spousal differentials in socio-demographic characteristics are bound to alter gender roles and relations that will impact Malaysia’s family institution and demographic outcomes.

Z nesezdaného soužití do manželství: záleží na vzdělanostní homogamii?

This article examines the association between cohabiting partners’ educational homogamy and transition to marriage. This paper enriches previous studies with its comparative dimension to find out if and how the association differs in countries with different meanings of cohabitation – in Austria, Poland, and the Czech Republic. It also examines if and how the association between the transition to marriage and educational homogamy is changing over time. Using data from the first wave of the Generations and Gender Survey (GGS), the analysis shows that the transition to marriage depends on partners’ relative education only in countries where cohabitation and marriage are two very different institutions – Poland and the Czech Republic. Educational hypergamy and hypogamy are not associated with the transition in the same way. In cohabitations where the man is more educated, the probability of marriage is half that compared to homogamous cohabitations, whereas cohabitations with a more educated woman are not significantly different from homogamous cohabitations. Over time, the association between relative education and the transition to marriage has not changed.

Partners’ Educational Pairings and Subjective Well-Being in China: An Analysis Using the Diagonal Mobility Model

Using pooled data from the Chinese General Social Survey in 2010, 2012, 2013, and 2015, this study investigated the relationship between partners’ educational pairings and subjective well-being among Chinese. Diagonal mobility models were employed to avoid conflating the effect of each partner’s education and the effect of the difference in education between partners. The findings reveal that regarding the well-being consequences of partners’ educational pairings, the hypothesis of satisfaction with marrying up outweighs the hypothesis of educational homogamy advantages and the hypothesis of sex roles. Specifically, for both women and men, persons marrying up in education are more likely to feel happy than their educationally homogamous counterparts. Moreover, educational hypergamy confers more psychological benefits to women in high-income communities than those in low-income communities. In addition, the earnings difference between partners plays a part in men’s SWB. Husbands who earn less than their wives are more likely to be unhappy than those whose earnings are 1–1.5 times those of their wives, suggesting that sex-role norms are at work. Our study contributes to a deeper understanding of the well-being consequences of educational heterogamy.

The Consolidation of Education and Health in Families

For a given person, many socioeconomic resources are correlated, but resources also accumulate in families, depending on how people sort in relationships based on their individual characteristics. This study proposes that people match on multiple resources in long-term relationships as a strategy for creating families with systematically advantaged portfolios—a strategy we call “consolidation.” Analyzing Health and Retirement Study data and using smoking as a measure of health, we show that couples match on both educational and health statuses at the start of marriage, and this systematic pattern of matching intensifies over time. We find that matching on smoking is not simply a byproduct of educational homogamy, and that matching on smoking/non-smoking status has increased over time. Moreover, couples increasingly sort on education and health jointly, such that highly educated couples are even more likely to be nonsmoking than would be expected by matching on education or smoking status alone. Increasing educational inequalities in quitting smoking between marriage and first birth reinforce this consolidation process. Using Current Population Surveys, we find these patterns are stronger in marriages than in cohabitations. The consolidation of education and health in couples is an important mechanism that amplifies inequality in families and, potentially, across generations.

Educational Assortative Mating and Health: A Study in Chinese Internal Migrants

Previous studies have shown that marriage is related with people’s health. Based on data from the Volume A of China Migrants Dynamic Survey (CMDS_A) in 2017 (N = 127,829), this study attempted to document the degree of educational assortative mating in Chinese internal migrants, as well as how it evolves over time, and further analyze the relationship between educational assortative mating and people’s self-rated health (SRH). The results indicated that the proportion of educational homogamy kept increasing and gradient marriage kept decreasing over time both in male and female. “Educational homogamy” (58.8%) and “male more educated” (27.2%) were still the main marital education matching patterns in first-married couples of Chinese internal migrants. Educational homogamy was beneficial to promote people’s SRH and educational hypogamy would impair their SRH, and the negative effects of educational hypogamy on SRH was stronger in female than in male. The gender equality of educational opportunities increases the degree of educational assortative mating in Chinese internal migrants. Educational attainment is playing a more and more important role in “love” marriages. “Likes attract likes” is not just about love, but also an important part of health.

Opportunities and Constraints of the Partner Market and Educational Assortative Mating

This study aims to determine to what extent the opportunities and restrictions of the partner market influence educational assortative mating. It also analyzes the interplay between the opportunity structure and preferences. Matching district-based partner market indicators to heterosexual couples when they move in together based on the German Socio-Economic Panel, we find strong effects of the opportunity structure on educational homogamy. The results further imply that the density of the supply of potential partners is more important for educational assortative mating than imbalanced supply and competition. While the impact of partner market imbalances on assortative mating is a mere effect of the opportunity structure, the effects of the partner market density of relevant and available partners in space weakly imply that homophile and maximization preferences are simultaneously at work.