Spousal Educational Attainment and Sleep Duration Among American Older Adults

Spousal education and frailty levels among Chinese older adults: A national longitudinal study

Background

Prior research has identified one's own education level as a risk factor for frailty. However, the association between spousal education and frailty in later life is uncertain. We aim to examine the longitudinal association between spousal education and frailty levels among Chinese older populations.

Methods

3856 participants aged 60 and older from the 2011-2018 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study were analyzed. A 54-item deficit cumulative frailty index was developed to evaluate frailty levels at each follow-up. Linear mixed-effects models were used to examine the longitudinal association of spousal education with frailty levels, and whether this association varied by sex and own education level.

Results

Higher spouse education was associated with lower frailty levels, and this association decreased with age. Compared with older adults whose spouses had no formal education, older adults whose spouses had less than middle school education had an 8.82 lower level of frailty (95% CI: 15.05 to -2.58, P < 0.01); those with spouses with middle school education and above had a 23.44 lower level (95% CI: 31.43 to -15.44, P < 0.001). Stratified analysis showed that every additional year of spouse education was also associated with lower frailty levels in non-frail participants at baseline, but stronger among those already frail. The association between high spousal education and lower frailty did not vary by sex or own education.

Conclusion

This study reveals a significant association between having a more educated spouse and lower later-life frailty levels for both older men and women, regardless of one's own educational background. It emphasizes the importance of leveraging educated spouses to prevent and manage frailty.

The influence of parents' and partner's education on own health behaviours

The link between educational attainment and multiple health behaviours has been explained in various ways. This paper provides new insights into the social patterning in health behaviours by investigating the influence of parents' and partners' educational attainments on a composite indicator that integrates the four commonly studied lifestyle behaviours (smoking, alcohol, physical activity and BMI). Two key outcome indicators of interests were created to reflect both ends of the "healthy - unhealthy spectrum". Data was drawn from The Tromsø Study, conducted in 2015/16 (N = 21,083, aged 40-93 years). We controlled for two indicators of early life human capital and one personality trait variable. Partners' education attainments are relatively more important for avoiding unhealthy behaviour than choosing healthy behaviour; on the contrary, parents' education is more important for healthy behaviour. Heterogeneity by sex and age was also evident. The influences of partner's education on widening the socioeconomic contrasts in health behaviours were much stronger in the younger (40-59 years) age group. In conclusion, our results support the hypothesis that own health behaviour is affected by the educational attainments of our 'nearest and dearest' (i.e. spouse, mother, and father), net of own education. This study facilitates a better understanding of education-health behaviours nexus from a life course perspective and supports the importance of family-based interventions to improve healthy behaviours.

Interracial unions and sleep duration among heterosexual American adults

For Americans in romantic unions, sleep occurs in the context of couple relationships. Romantic partners influence one another's circadian rhythms, share beds, buffer or cause stress, and share resources that can be used to improve sleep. Moreover, sleep among individuals in interracial relationships may be negatively impacted by the social construction of race/ethnicity that drive health disparities and that point to the importance of factors such as racism, stress and social adversity that represent the unique lived reality of interracial couples in the U.S. Using non-dyadic data from the 2004-2018 National Health Interview Survey (n = 243,552) we fit a series of multinomial regression models predicting self-reported sleep duration of six or fewer (short), seven to eight (normal), and nine or more (long) hours. After adjusting for demographics, household socioeconomic characteristics, and health characteristics/behaviors, we find that individuals in interracial unions report significantly higher odds of short sleep compared to normal sleep. Race/ethnic stratified models indicated that all respondents in interracial relationships had higher odds of reporting short sleep, but that the association was particularly pronounced among non-Hispanic White adults and Hispanic adults. Generally, we find few differences in these associations between men and women or between those in marital versus those in cohabiting relationships. Future research should continue to investigate how social inequality conditions sleep for Americans in romantic relationships.