Nonmarital Cohabitation and Health in Adolescence and Young Adulthood

非婚同居与青春期和青年期的健康

• 批准号: 7788747
• 负责人: MICHAEL SEAN POLLARD
• 金额: $ 8.52万
• 依托单位: RAND CORPORATION
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-03-01 至 2012-02-29
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/7788747
• 关键词: Adolescence; Adolescent; Adult; Affect; Age; Area; Attention; Behavior; Biological; Characteristics; Child; Child Rearing; Complex; Data; Economics; Ethnic Origin; Ethnic group; Family; Fathers; Future; Gender; Goals; Government; Health; Health Benefit; Health behavior; Health behavior outcomes; Heterogeneity; Heterosexuals; Home environment; Income; Individual; Institution; Legal; Life; Literature; Long-Term Effects; Longitudinal Studies; Marriage; Mental Health; Modeling; Never Married; Occupational; Outcome; Parents; Participant; Pathway interactions; Pattern; Personal Satisfaction; Policies; Populations at Risk; Prevalence; Psyche structure; Race; Recording of previous events; Relative (related person); Research; Risk Behaviors; Role; Social Policies; Time; United States; Woman; age effect; base; experience; male; men; neglect; physical conditioning; programs; public health relevance; racial and ethnic; research study; social; theories; young adult

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The proposed project will examine how nonmarital cohabitation during adolescence and young adulthood causally impacts individual physical and mental health, as well as healthy behaviors that determine future adult health across gender and racial/ethnic groups. The rapid rise in nonmarital cohabitation has markedly changed the landscape of romantic relationships in the United States; cohabitation has become a normative experience for both men and women by age 25. The rapid increase in cohabitation raises concerns about its consequences for the lives of individuals involved in this family form, as research indicates that cohabiters hold lower levels of commitment, and cohabitations are more easily dissolved than marriages. Although the prevalence and patterns of cohabitation have generally been well documented, we know very little about the outcomes of nonmarital cohabitation. This is especially true for young participants; despite the increasing significance of cohabitation at younger ages, the cohabitation literature continues to focus on adults, and treats the experiences of cohabitation the same at all ages. Heterogeneity with age and "meaning" (the goals and purpose of the cohabitation, according to the partners - classifying cohabitation into 4 distinct types) has both been neglected by prior research. A considerable amount of research has established that married individuals live longer, healthier lives than others. Similar research on the parallel health benefits of cohabitation is sparse, and virtually nonexistent from adolescence into young adulthood despite substantial levels of cohabitation at these ages. Our project has three specific aims: 1) Generate descriptive trajectories of an array of health outcomes and behaviors from adolescence into young adulthood separately for men and women and for race/ethnicity, and examine correlations between relationship status (marriage, cohabitation, singlehood) with particular trajectories, using a semi-parametric group-based modeling strategy; 2) Use data on relationship histories to model how cohabitation experience causally affects health and healthy behaviors relative to marriage or singlehood from adolescence into young adulthood using longitudinal fixed effects models that control for all unobserved stable characteristics of the individuals; 3) Explore how heterogeneity in age (the timing of relationship experience) and in meaning of cohabitation (4 types) alter assessments of the role of cohabitation in health from adolescence into young adulthood. Longitudinal data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescents will be used; it is the largest study of adolescents ever conducted, as well as the only one with the means to examine the association between four different types of cohabitation and a variety of health outcomes. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: This study will inform programs that target adolescent and young adult health by providing empirical findings about the long-term effects of adolescent romantic relationships (cohabitation and marriage) on mental and physical health and risky behaviors. The project highlights effects of differences in timing and in the type, or meaning, of cohabitation on outcomes (heterogeneity in age and meaning).

描述（由申请人提供）：拟议的项目将研究青春期和青年期的非婚同居如何对个人身心健康产生因果影响，以及跨性别和种族/族裔群体决定未来成年健康的健康行为。非婚同居的迅速增加显著地改变了美国的恋爱关系格局；对于25岁以上的男性和女性来说，同居已经成为一种常态。同居的迅速增加引起了人们对这种家庭形式中个人生活后果的担忧，因为研究表明，同居者的承诺水平较低，而且同居比婚姻更容易解体。尽管同居的流行程度和模式已经有了很好的文献记载，但我们对非婚同居的后果知之甚少。对于年轻的参与者来说尤其如此；尽管年轻人同居的重要性日益增加，但同居文献继续关注成年人，并对所有年龄段的同居经历进行了相同的处理。年龄和“意义”（同居的目标和目的，根据伴侣将同居分为四种不同的类型）的异质性都被先前的研究所忽视。相当多的研究已经证实，已婚人士比其他人活得更长、更健康。关于同居对健康的平行益处的类似研究很少，而且几乎没有从青春期到成年早期的研究，尽管在这些年龄段有大量的同居。我们的项目有三个具体目标：1)分别为男性和女性以及种族/民族生成从青春期到青年期的一系列健康结果和行为的描述性轨迹，并使用半参数基于群体的建模策略，检查关系状态（婚姻、同居、单身）与特定轨迹之间的相关性；2)利用关系史数据，利用纵向固定效应模型，控制所有未观察到的个体稳定特征，模拟同居经历如何对青春期至青年期与婚姻或单身相关的健康和健康行为产生因果影响；3)探讨年龄（恋爱经历的时间）和同居意义（4种类型）的异质性如何改变同居对青春期至青年期健康的影响。将使用国家青少年纵向研究的纵向数据；这是迄今为止对青少年进行的规模最大的研究，也是唯一一项有办法检验四种不同类型的同居与各种健康结果之间关系的研究。