How does the age gap between partners affect their survival?

Drefahl, Sven

doi:10.1353/dem.0.0106

Cited by 65 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…Though the variation is much less pronounced, the ranking of the premiums after 10 years in a union is identical to the pattern found for men, which means that the premiums decrease with the absolute value of the age gap. For women, this pattern qualitatively resembles the results found in a study using Danish data (Drefahl 2010) in which it is shown that age homogamy is beneficial for wives in terms of mortality (i.e., the closer in age a married woman is to her husband, the lower her mortality risk). For men, however, the mortality risk continuously increases with the age of the partner (i.e., the younger the spouse, the smaller the mortality risk).…”

Section: Figure 4 Heresupporting

confidence: 84%

OUP accepted manuscript

Dribe

Nystedt

2017

Social Forces

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Previous research has shown considerable marriage premiums in earnings for men, but often penalties for women of being in a union. In this study we extend this research by analyzing how the age difference between spouses affects the earnings profiles by gender. As we follow people over time in advance as well as within their marriage we can separate pre-marital from post-marital earnings movements. The data consists of information on annual earnings 1990-2009 for all Swedes born 1960-1974 (N=926,219). The results indicate that age-homogamy is related to higher earnings for both men and women, and that larger age differences are generally associated with lower union premiums, quite independently of which spouse is older. However, most of these results are explained by assortative mating, in which men and women with greater earnings potentials find partners of a similar age. Overall, the agedifference between spouses seems to have a limited causal effect, if any, on individual earnings.

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Section: Figure 4 Heresupporting

confidence: 84%

OUP accepted manuscript

Dribe

Nystedt

2017

Social Forces

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show abstract

“…Alternatively, large age gaps could signal a second marriage, as a divorced or widowed man is more likely to enter a man-older union than a man entering a first marriage (Drefahl 2010a;Shafer 2013).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Hancock, Stuchbury et al (2003) showed that although the median spousal age gap remained almost unchanged from 1963 to 1998 in England and Wales, the changes in the age gap pattern that occurred over this period were masked by a substantial increase in the proportion of women-older marriages and a smaller increase in the proportion of men-older marriages. In Denmark, the age gap has remained relatively stable throughout the twentieth century (Drefahl 2010a). From 1955 to 2015, the mean age at first marriage increased from 23.4 to 32.0 among women and from 26.6 to 34.5 among men, which resulted in a narrowing of the marital age gap from 3.2 to 2.5 years (Statistics Denmark 2016).…”

Section: Reasons For Age Gaps In Marriagementioning

confidence: 99%

Does the age difference between partners influence the career achievements of women?

Oksuzyan¹,

Carollo²,

Drefahl³

et al. 2017

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Women earn less than men at most career stages, and they also tend to partner with older men. This study investigates whether being the younger partner in a marriage reduces a woman's incentive to pursue an independent career. We hypothesize that the income gender gap might be partially explained by the age differences between spouses. Using both a within-twin (n = 4716) and pooled-twin (n = 13354) design to more readily account for differences in early household environments, we investigated for Denmark whether the age gap between a female twin and her partner has any influence on her income. The hypothesis could not be confirmed, as the age gap between partners did not appear to be associated with women's earnings. The finding that women's wages were generally unaffected by partnering with an older man could be a result of heterogeneous groups of women entering men-older partnerships. Future research should explore this question further by using the number of promotions to assess the career success of women, and should extend this work to countries with different social welfare systems and less egalitarian gender norms.

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“…Inactive members are those who were baptized as children but where we have no evidence that they later pledged to abide by the Church doctrine. We control for age difference between the husband and wife as research suggests that the age difference between partners affects their hazard of mortality (Drefahl, 2010).…”

Section: Individuals In These Data May or May Not Have An Affiliationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of widowhood on mortality in polygamous marriages: evidence from the Utah Population Database

Barclay¹,

Thorén²,

Hanson³

et al. 2019

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Although the increase in mortality following widowhood has been widely studied, much less is known about how this pattern varies across less common household structures.Polygamous marriages are still prevalent across much of the world, but whether and how mortality varies following the death of a partner has not been studied in polygamous relationships.In this study we use data from the Utah Population Database to examine the relationship between marital status and mortality in polygamous marriages in 19th century Utah. With data on 110,952 women and 106,898 men, we particularly focus on whether the widowhood mortality effect varies between monogamous and polygamous marriages. We examine how the number of wife deaths affects male mortality in polygamous marriages, how the death of a sister wife, meaning other women with whom they share a husband, affects female mortality relative to the death of a husband, as well as how marriage order amongst sister wives affects the mortality of women in polygamous marriages. For women we find that the death of a husband in polygamous marriages increases mortality to a similar extent as in monogamous marriages, while the death of a sister wife does not have a qualitatively different effect on mortality than the death of the husband. Marriage order does not play a role in the mortality of women in polygamous marriages in this historical context. For men we find that the death of one wife in a polygamous marriage increases mortality to a lesser extent than it does for men in monogamous marriages.For men there is a dose-response effect to losing additional wives. We discuss these findings in relation to theories regarding the mechanisms driving the widowhood mortality effect.

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How does the age gap between partners affect their survival?

Cited by 65 publications

References 12 publications

OUP accepted manuscript

OUP accepted manuscript

Does the age difference between partners influence the career achievements of women?

The effect of widowhood on mortality in polygamous marriages: evidence from the Utah Population Database

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