The role of marriage in the life satisfaction and mortality association at older ages: age and sex differences

Abstract

Objectives

Although life satisfaction (LS) could reduce mortality risk of older adults, whether the LS-mortality link is consistent in older adults with different marital status is largely unknown. In this study, we examine (1) how the LS-mortality association at older ages varies by marital status and marital quality, and (2) whether the role of marriage in the LS-mortality link differs between young-old (ages 65–79) and oldest-old (ages 80+) ages and between men and women in mainland China.

Methods

We used five waves of data from a nationally representative survey in mainland China and applied the multilevel random effect of survival analysis to examine the LS-mortality association in Chinese older adults by marital status, controlling for a wide set of covariates.

Results

First, the protective effect of LS on mortality was valid in older men regardless of their marital status, whereas the protective effect was only valid in currently-not-married older women. Second, for a good marriage, LS significantly reduced mortality risk irrespective of gender and age, while for a poor marriage, LS had no significant association with mortality of older adults. Third, the LS-mortality association seemed to be stronger in the oldest-old than in the young-old irrespective of their marital status.

Conclusion

Given the pivotal role of spouse in daily life, the society should create an age-friendly social environment for re-marriage among older adults who wish to get re-married, while highlighting and advocating the importance of good marriage in determining healthy aging, and design various policies to improve the LS of older people to reduce their mortality risk.

Supplemental data for this article is available online at.

Keywords:

• Marital status
• quality of marriage
• life satisfaction
• mortality
• older adults
• oldest-old
• gender difference
• China
• CLHLS

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the Editor, two anonymous reviewers, and Dr. Qiushi Feng from the National University of Singapore for their helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

Funding

L.M.’s work was supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 19BRK024) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics (Grant No. 2021110077).