Marriage protection and marriage selection--prospective evidence for reciprocal effects of marital status and health

Marital status effects on health: are there differences between never married women and divorced and separated women?

To test whether the effects of marital status on health differ between never married women and divorced and separated women, this study utilizes prospective panel data for a large national sample of non-institutionalized young women in the U.S. (the National Longitudinal Surveys of Young Women). The women were aged 24-34 at the beginning of two successive five-year follow-up intervals (1978-1983 and 1983-1988). The health effects of marital status were evaluated in regressions which assessed the relationships between initial marital status and subsequent health trends in each follow-up interval. In the first follow-up interval, never married women tended to have worse health trends than divorced and separated women for physical impairments and for overall health problems. However, there were no differences between never married women and divorced and separated women in health trends for psychosomatic symptoms in either follow-up interval or for any health measure in the second follow-up interval. Our analyses of cross-sectional data showed few significant differences in health between never married women and divorced and separated women. Taken together, the evidence from our study and previous studies suggests that differences between never married women and divorced and separated women may vary by age and/or cohort. Evidence for the 1970s and 1980s suggests that, among older women, divorced and separated women may have experienced more harmful health effects than never married women; however, among younger women, this difference may have been absent or possibly reversed.

Level of education, age of bearing children and mental health of women

The present study examined the longitudinal relationship between women's mental health and both their level of education and age at which they had their first child. The women were divided into four groups depending on whether or not they had further education after leaving school and whether or not they had a baby before the age of 21. Longitudinal data collected over a 19-year period from this group of women suggested that psychological morbidity was relatively stable across this time span. Women who left school without proceeding to further education and those who became mothers before the age of 21 had higher psychological symptom scores than the other groups throughout this period. These two factors were associated with poorer mental health in an additive fashion. The women were also more likely to have separated from the father of their child and continued to be economically disadvantaged into mid-life.