Trajectories of negative and positive marital quality during later life

Abstract

This study aims to establish trajectories of later-life marital quality and assess predictors of trajectory membership. Although numerous studies examine marital quality across the early years of marriage, much less is known about older adults’ trajectories. Existing studies assess average patterns of stability or decline over the life course but have not explored the possibility of multiple trajectories during later life. This study uses nationally-representative data from the 2008–2018 waves of the Health and Retirement Study (https://www.hrs.isr.umich.edu). Latent growth mixture models are estimated to identify unique trajectories of positive and negative dimensions of marital quality over an eight-year time period among a sample of adults aged 51 to 97 (n = 4,467). Results show two distinct patterns of marital quality during later life: (1) high, slightly increasing positive marital quality with low, slightly declining negative marital quality; and (2) moderate, sharply declining positive marital quality with moderate, stable negative marital quality. Significant predictors of trajectory membership include gender, household income, marital duration, remarriage, self-rated health, and depressive symptoms. Rather than patterns of stability or continual decline in marital quality over the later life course, we find the most common trajectory during later life is slight improvement. Only about 12% of older adults experience decline, and that decline is limited to the dimension of positive marital quality, with no uptick in negative marital quality.