A new study led by Zoey Wang, postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Michigan, has found significant racial, ethnic, and sex disparities in the marital status and living arrangements of older adults in the United States.
In an analysis of more than 20,000 people over age 50 who participated in the Health and Retirement Study between 1992 and 2018, the study authors found that women spend fewer years married than men across all major racial groups. Among White adults, men average 25.5 years married and women average 18 years married. For the Hispanic population, men average 23.4 years married and women average 15.5 years married. Among Black adults, men spend nearly twice as many years married as women, averaging 17.6 years and 9.7 years, respectively.
Women were also found to spend a significantly longer portion of their lives living without a partner. White, Hispanic, and Black men spend 81.4 percent, 78 percent, and 67 percent of their lives past age 50 living with a spouse, respectively. In contrast, White, Hispanic, and Black women spend 52.5 percent, 43.2 percent, and 28.2 percent of this time living with a spouse, respectively.
“Our findings show that later-life family structures in the United States are far more unequal than traditional narratives suggest,” said Dr. Wang. “Because many social policies are built around the assumption of stable, long-term marriage, they often fail to protect older adults — especially minority women — whose life courses follow very different family trajectories.”
In addition to Dr. Wang, the study included co-authors from Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore and Yale University