The increase in marital status differences in mortality up to the oldest age in seven European countries, 1990–99

Abstract

We investigate mortality differentials by marital status among older age groups using a database of mortality rates by marital status at ages 40 and over for seven European countries with 1 billion person-years of exposure. The mortality advantage of married people, both men and women, continues to increase up to at least the age group 85–89, the oldest group we are able to consider. We find the largest absolute differences in mortality levels between marital status groups are at high ages, and that absolute differentials are: (i) greater for men than for women; (ii) similar in magnitude across countries; (iii) increase steadily with age; and (iv) are greatest at older age. We also find that the advantage enjoyed by married people increased over the 1990s in almost all cases. We note that results for groups such as older divorced women need to be interpreted with caution.

Keywords:

• mortality
• Europe
• older people
• marital status
• time series
• vital statistics

Notes

1. Michael Murphy is at the Department of Social Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK. E-mail: [email protected]. Emily Grundy is at the Centre for Population Studies, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Stamatis Kalogirou is at the London School of Economics.

2. This work was funded by a European Commission project, Future Elderly Living Conditions in Europe, under 5th Research Programme Framework ‘Quality of Life’ contract QLRT-2001-02310, and by the ESRC project Modelling Needs and Resources of Older People to 2030 (RES-339-25-0002). We thank the members of the FELICIE team and national statistical offices for providing data and comments.