Marital status, marital status transitions, and depression: does age matter?
Abstract
Most of what we currently know about the association between marital status and
mental health is derived from studies that implicitly assume an ageless adult, who is
affected by their marital status in the same way to the same degree throughout the adult
life course. Using panel data from a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults, I
evaluate the usefulness of this assumption by assessing the moderating potential of age
on the association between marital status, marital status transitions, and depression,
paying special attention to gender. Further, I examine the extent to which contextual
factors such as economic well-being and measures of social integration and social support
mediate the association between marital status and depression by age, as well as by
gender. My findings indicate that the impact of marital status and marital loss on
depression is moderated by age for men, but is consistent across age for women. Further,
I find substantial variation in the extent to which economic well-being and social
integration measures account for the association between marital status and depression
across age, as well as by gender. In general, the impact of the measures of economic
well-being on the association between marital status and depression is significantly
greater than is the impact of the social integration and support measures, particularly for
the young- and middle-aged, as well as for women. With regard to age, I find that
economic well-being mediates more of the association between marital status and
depression for the middle-aged than for younger and older adults, while the social
integration and support measures account for more of the association between marital
status and depression among young and older adults. Taken together, these results
contribute to our understanding of group variation in the associations between marital
status, marital status transitions, and depression.
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