Does one's own and one's spouse's education affect overall and cause-specific mortality in the elderly?

Jaffe, DH; Eisenbach, Zvi; Neumark, YD; Manor, Orly

doi:10.1093/ije/dyi185

Cited by 29 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…Our results are consistent with previous findings from England, Sweden, Norway, and Israel indicating that one’s partner’s education is significant as a predictor of one’s own mortality risk. 6 , 8 , 28 , 29 One possible explanation is that married men and women can share economic resources and give one another social and emotional support. 9 , 30 High education among the women lowered the mortality risk among their husbands more significantly ( P < 0.05) than vice versa.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Individual, Spousal, and Offspring Socioeconomic Status on Mortality Among Elderly People in China

Yang

Martikainen

Silventoinen

2016

Journal of Epidemiology

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BackgroundThe relationship between socio-economic status and health among elderly people has been well studied, but less is known about how spousal or offspring’s education affects mortality, especially in non-Western countries. We investigated these associations using a large sample of Chinese elderly.MethodsThe data came from the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS) from the years 2005 to 2011 (n = 15 355, aged 65–105 years at baseline; 5046 died in 2008, and 2224 died in 2011). Educational attainment, occupational status, and household income per capita were used as indicators of socio-economic status. Spousal and offspring’s education were added into the final models. The Cox proportional hazards model was used to study mortality risk by gender.ResultsAdjusted for age, highly educated males and females had, on average, 29% and 37% lower mortality risk, respectively, than those with a lower education. Particularly among men, this effect was observed among those whose children had intermediate education only. A higher household income was also associated with lower mortality risk among the elderly. Male elderly living with a well-educated spouse (HR 0.79; 95% CI, 0.64–0.99) had a lower mortality risk than those living with a low-educated spouse.ConclusionsBoth the socio-economic status of the individual and the educational level of a co-resident spouse or child are associated with mortality risk in elderly people. The socio-economic position of family members plays an important role in producing health inequality among elderly people.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Individual, Spousal, and Offspring Socioeconomic Status on Mortality Among Elderly People in China

Yang

Martikainen

Silventoinen

2016

Journal of Epidemiology

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“…A smaller number of previous studies investigate the health effects of schooling within marriage and find positive associations of own schooling with spouse health status (Egeland et al, 2002; Lipowicz, 2003; Jaffe et al, 2005; Kravdal, 2008; Li et al, 2011). We are aware, however, of only one such study that uses within-MZ-twins estimates to control for unobserved endowments.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cross-sectional schooling-health associations misrepresented causal schooling effects on adult health and health-related behaviors: Evidence from the Chinese Adults Twins Survey

Behrman

Xiong

Zhang

2015

Social Science & Medicine

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Adult health outcomes and health behaviors are often associated with schooling. However, such associations do not necessarily imply that schooling has causal effects on health with the signs or magnitudes found in the cross-sectional associations. Schooling may be proxying for unobserved factors related to genetics and family background that directly affect both health and schooling. Recently several studies have used within-monozygotic (MZ) twins methods to control for unobserved factors shared by identical twins. Within-MZ estimates for developed countries are generally smaller than suggested by cross-sectional associations, consistent with positive correlations between unobserved factors that determine schooling and those that determine health. This study contributes new estimates of cross-sectional associations and within-MZ causal effects using the Chinese Adults Twins Survey, the first study of its type for developing countries. The cross-sectional estimates suggest that schooling is significantly associated with adult health-related behaviors (smoking, drinking, exercising) but not with own or spouse health outcomes (general health, mental health, overweight, chronic diseases). However, within-MZ-twins estimators change the estimates for approximately half of these health indicators, in one case declining in absolute magnitudes and becoming insignificant and in the other cases increasing in absolute magnitudes. Within-MZ estimates indicate significant pro-health effects for at least one of the indicators for own health (better mental health), own health-related behaviors (less smoking) and spouse health (less overweight).

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“…The impact of these shared health-related characteristics are unlikely to be fully reflected by an individual family member's education alone: it may be more comprehensively captured by the combined educational attainment of the married couple. Yet, few studies have looked at differences in mortality based on the combined education of married pairs 10 11. Studies generally use separate measures for each partner without considering modification of effects by combined education.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Individual and spousal education, mortality and life expectancy in Switzerland: a national cohort study

Spoerri

Schmidlin

Richter

et al. 2014

J Epidemiol Community Health

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Does one's own and one's spouse's education affect overall and cause-specific mortality in the elderly?

Abstract: Mortality among elderly married persons is associated with one's own and one's spouse's educational achievement. Research using partner's education as a proxy for one's own attainment may be omitting valuable information regarding these and other health risks.

Cited by 29 publications

References 47 publications

Effects of Individual, Spousal, and Offspring Socioeconomic Status on Mortality Among Elderly People in China

Effects of Individual, Spousal, and Offspring Socioeconomic Status on Mortality Among Elderly People in China

Cross-sectional schooling-health associations misrepresented causal schooling effects on adult health and health-related behaviors: Evidence from the Chinese Adults Twins Survey

Individual and spousal education, mortality and life expectancy in Switzerland: a national cohort study

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