Dyadic loneliness, age, and cognitive functioning among midlife and older Black couples

Abstract

Objectives: Within marriages, loneliness has been linked with individuals’ own and their partners’ cognitive health. Yet little research has situated Black older adults within a relational, dyadic context.

Method: This study analyzed longitudinal dyadic data from the Health and Retirement Study (2010–2016; n = 1270 participants from 635 couples) from both partners in opposite-sex midlife and older couples where at least one partner reported being Black or African American.

Results: Results indicated (1) husbands’ loneliness was associated with worse cognitive functioning 4 years later for wives who had high baseline cognitive functioning themselves; (2) wives’ loneliness was associated with worse cognitive functioning 4 years later only for oldest-old husbands; and (3) wives’ cognitive functioning was associated with slower increases to husbands’ loneliness 4 years later.

Conclusion: Findings indicate that loneliness has dyadic consequences for cognitive functioning among older Black couples, but that context is crucial for determining who is at greatest risk of harmful repercussions from a partner’s loneliness.

Keywords:

• Cognitive functioning
• loneliness
• stress/burden
• quantitative methods and statistics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a grant from the National Institute on Aging (R03AG064283). The HRS (Health and Retirement Study) is sponsored by the National Institute on Aging (grant number NIA U01AG009740) and is conducted by the University of Michigan.