Beyond marital status: Partner history and well-being in old age

Applying a life course perspective to the relationship between well-being and partner status suggests that the well-being of older adults is not only influenced by their current marital status, but also by aspects of their partner history. Life history data from a recent Dutch survey are used to examine the relationship between partner history variables and loneliness (n = 3,390). Older adults who are currently not involved in a partner relationship are lonelier than older adults with a partner. Furthermore, loneliness increases with the number of union dissolutions that older adults have experienced and decreases with the time elapsed since the last dissolution. No differences in loneliness are found between widowed and divorced older adults. The loss or lack of a partner is more detrimental for males than for females. These differences remain after controlling for age, health, network size, income, and educational attainment. This suggests that it is difficult to compensate for the lack or loss of relationship specific benefits of having a partner, especially for males.