Marital quality, gender, and later-life depressive symptom trajectories

ABSTRACT

We analyze six waves of data (2006–2016) from the Health and Retirement Study (n = 4,342) to examine how marital quality is associated with depressive symptom trajectories among a group of continuously married older adults. Results show gender parity in how own perceptions of positive and negative dimensions of marital quality are related to depressive symptom trajectories. In addition, spousal perceptions of negative marital quality are positively associated with growth in depressive symptomatology regardless of gender. Spousal perceptions of positive marital quality, however, are associated with lower depressive symptoms only for women.

KEYWORDS:

• Marital quality
• gender
• depressive symptoms

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.