IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/geronb/v75y2020i8p1808-1817..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Relationship Quality Among Older Cohabitors: A Comparison to Remarrieds

Author

Listed:
  • Matthew R Wright
  • Deborah Carr

Abstract

ObjectivesLater life marital patterns have undergone shifts over the past few decades, including a rapid growth of cohabiting unions. Despite the increase in older adult cohabitation, research on this population has been slow to keep up. Intimate relationships are linked to well-being and relationship quality is especially important because high-quality relationships offer a number of benefits for well-being, whereas poor-quality relationships often are detrimental. This study compares cohabiting and remarried individuals on two measures of relationship quality.MethodUsing data from the 2010 and 2012 Health and Retirement Study, I investigate the positive and negative relationship quality of cohabitors relative to their remarried counterparts and whether the association of union type and relationship quality varies by race.ResultsAcross both positive and negative relationship quality, I found few differences between cohabiting and remarried individuals. Black cohabitors report higher positive relationship quality than remarrieds, whereas White cohabitors and remarrieds do not differ.DiscussionThese findings suggest that cohabiting unions and remarriages are comparable among White older adults, but that Black cohabitors may gain more in terms of positive relationship quality than their remarried counterparts.

Suggested Citation

  • Matthew R Wright & Deborah Carr, 2020. "Relationship Quality Among Older Cohabitors: A Comparison to Remarrieds," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 75(8), pages 1808-1817.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:geronb:v:75:y:2020:i:8:p:1808-1817.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/geronb/gbz069
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:geronb:v:75:y:2020:i:8:p:1808-1817.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.