Union History and Midlife Health

摘要 已婚人士的发病率和死亡率大大低于已婚人士，并且享有更好的健康状况。 未婚人士。然而，婚姻可能只代表了一个人一生中的一个阶段，也就是健康 婚姻的好处可能取决于婚姻的年龄和持续时间。此外，婚前同居和 婚后的结合状态也可能有助于日后的健康状况。最近的工作已经从 研究按婚姻状况或过渡期划分的健康差距，以关注婚姻历史和健康状况。 然而，对婚姻历史的衡量并不包括在生命过程中展开的累积影响 忽视早期的工会经历可能会如何塑造后来的工会的健康后果。在此应用程序中， 我们提出了一种生命历程的观点，并假设联合历史(包括时间、持续时间和顺序 单身、婚姻、同居、离婚和/或丧偶)会影响健康 中年的结局。《1979年全国青年纵向调查(NLSY79)》2016年潮数据 代表着一个里程碑，所有受访者都已年满50岁，并回答了设计好的健康问题 对于那个年龄来说。我们应用序列分析来捕捉工会历史的完整结构。我们的方法是 创新之处在于，我们通过时间、持续时间和 成年人早期生活中的个人联合事件的顺序，这与生活的进程很好地对应 经历可能会对中年健康产生累积影响。我们调查了性别、种族/民族和 社会阶层塑造了婚姻历史轨迹，婚姻历史轨迹如何影响中年健康结果，以及 婚姻历史轨迹和中年健康结果之间的关系如何因性别而异， 种族/民族和社会阶层。这项工作将产生关于日益复杂的工会历史的知识 这一轨迹加剧了美国不同人群之间日益扩大的健康差距。

Abstract Married individuals have substantially lower risks of morbidity and mortality and enjoy better health than unmarried people. Yet marriage may represent only one stage over an individual’s life course, and health benefits of marriage may depend on marital age and duration. Furthermore, cohabitation before marriage and union status after marriage may also contribute to health outcomes later in life. Recent work has moved from research on health disparities by marital status or transition to focus its attention on union history and health. However, measures of union history do not capture cumulative effects that unfold over the life course and neglect how earlier union experiences may shape the health consequences of later unions. In this application, we propose a life course perspective and posit that union history (including timing, duration, and sequencing of singlehood, marriage, cohabitation, dissolution, and/or widowhood) in earlier adult life influences health outcomes in midlife. The data from the 2016 wave of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) represent a milestone in which all respondents had reached age 50 and answered health questions designed for that age. We apply sequence analysis to capture the complete structure of union history. Our approach is innovative in that we identify prototypical union history trajectories through measures of timing, duration, and sequencing of individuals’ union events in earlier adult life, which correspond well with how life course experiences may have cumulative effects on midlife health. We investigate how gender, race/ethnicity, and social class shape union history trajectory, how union history trajectory influences midlife health outcomes, and how the relationships between union history trajectory and midlife health outcomes vary by gender, race/ethnicity, and social class. This work will yield knowledge of how increasingly complex union history trajectories contribute to growing health disparities among America’s diverse populations.