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Marital status, health and mortality: the role of living arrangement
Paul Boyle, Peteke Feijten and Gereltuya Altankhuyag, University of St Andrews; Gillian Raab and Lin Hattersley, General Register Office for Scotland
[Project number 30054]
We want to investigate the effect of marital status and living arrangement
on health and mortality risk. In terms of model effects, we will test
the hypotheses that:
1. Those who live alone are more likely to die than those who live with
others.
2. Unmarried adults (separated, divorced or widowed) who live with others
are no more likely to die than married adults who live with others.
3. Living with other adults is more protective than living with children.
The purpose of the study is to contribute to the body of literature on
marital status and health, by adding a new element to the explanation
of why marriage is associated with better health.
It is widely known that being married lowers the risk of dying, and in
a number of previous studies the protective effects have been shown to
be greater for men than women. However, we have begun to investigate whether
it is marriage, or living with others, which is protective for health
outcomes. Using data from the 2001 Sample of Anonymised Records (SAR),
Boyle and Feng (submitted) do indeed show that for men it is not being
married, but living with others which reduces the risk of limiting long-term
illness (LLTI). Thus, single, separated and divorced men who live with
others have no higher risk of LLTI than married men. This study also shows
that for women the risk of LLTI is considerably higher for those who live
alone, regardless of marital status but, interestingly given previous
studies which suggest that men benefit from being married more than women,
unmarried women who live with others have slightly worse health outcomes
than married women who live with others.
This project will use a similar methodology to that used by Gardner and
Oswald (2004) who used the British Household Panel Study (BHPS) to compare
marital status and other characteristics in 1991 with subsequent death
between 1993 and 2001. However, their study did not explore living arrangements
and only included a sample of 3,695 with 741 deaths being recorded in
the period. By utilising the ONS LS, we will increase the sample and the
number of deaths substantially. We will also examine whether the effects
of marital status and living arrangements on subsequent death varies following
the 1971 and 1981 Censuses (and, if mortality numbers are large enough,
also mortality risk following the 2001 census). These will be separate
analyses per 10-year period, to see whether effects change over time.
To fully utilize the longitudinal power of the ONS LS, we also intend
to analyse mortality risk of 1971 and 1981 ONS LS members over time (up
to death or censoring), and assess whether changes in living arrangement
between census years affects their mortality risk. Lastly, we will explore
the effect of living arrangement on health, by comparing the LLTI for
those who were living alone, or not, in 1991 and 2001.
The project will use the following census and events data:
- 1971 Census data
- 1981 Census data
- 1991 Census data
- 2001 Census data
- Deaths of LS member, 1972 to present
This project was approved on 25 May 2006 and is supported by CeLSIUS.