ArticlePublisher preview available

The Marital Satisfaction of Differently Aged Couples

Authors:
To read the full-text of this research, you can request a copy directly from the authors.

Abstract and Figures

We investigate how the marital age gap affects the evolution of marital satisfaction over the duration of marriage using household panel data from Australia. We find that men tend to be more satisfied with younger wives and less satisfied with older wives. Interestingly, women likewise tend to be more satisfied with younger husbands and less satisfied with older husbands. Marital satisfaction declines with marital duration for both men and women in differently aged couples relative to those in similarly aged couples. These relative declines erase the initial higher levels of marital satisfaction experienced by men married to younger wives and women married to younger husbands within 6 to 10 years of marriage. A possible mechanism is that differently aged couples are less resilient to negative shocks compared to similarly aged couples, which we find some supportive evidence for.
This content is subject to copyright. Terms and conditions apply.
ORIGINAL PAPER
The marital satisfaction of differently aged couples
Wang-Sheng Lee
1
&Terra McK i n n i sh
2
Received: 1 September 2016 / Accepted: 27 June 2017 / Published online: 15 July 2017
#Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany 2017
Abstract We investigate how the marital age gap affects the evolution of marital
satisfaction over the duration of marriage using household panel data from Australia.
We find that men tend to be more satisfied with younger wives and less satisfied with
older wives. Interestingly, women likewise tend to be more satisfied with younger
husbands and less satisfied with older husbands. Marital satisfaction declines with
marital duration for both men and women in differently aged couples relative to those
in similarly aged couples. These relative declines erase the initial higher levels of
marital satisfaction experienced by men married to younger wives and women married
to younger husbands within 6 to 10 years of marriage. A possible mechanism is that
differently aged couples are less resilient to negative shocks compared to similarly aged
couples, which we find some supportive evidence for.
Keywords Assortativematching .Marital agegap .Marital duration .Marital satisfaction
JEL classification D1 .J12
1 Introduction
A well-documented feature of the marriage market is that individuals match assorta-
tively on age and that the most common pairing is one in which the husband is a few
years older than the wife (Presser 1975; Glick and Lin 1986). While this pattern of
J Popul Econ (2018) 31:337362
DOI 10.1007/s00148-017-0658-8
Responsible editor: Ale ssandro Cigno
*Wang-Sheng Lee
wang.lee@deakin.edu.au
Terra McKinnish
terra.mckinnish@colorado.edu
1
Department of Economics, Deakin University and IZA, 70 Elgar Road, Burwood,
VIC 3125, Australia
2
Department of Economics, University of Colorado and IZA, Boulder, CO 80309-0256, USA
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
... Although researchers have investigated the influences of a wide range of factors on marital satisfaction, little information has been published on the effect of age disparity (seniority or juniority) between couples. However, one Australian study indicated that both husbands and wives tended to be more satisfied with younger spouses [5]. in age-discrepant marriages face unique challenges such as differing health needs, caregiving expectations, and life stage goals. ...
... Obviously, marital satisfaction plays a significant role in the stability of this social unit, and thus, identifying factors that significantly impact spouse satisfaction is of considerable importance. However, few have examined the effect of age heterogamy on marital satisfaction [5,13], and studies on the effect of age disparity between couples are scarce. In this study, we examined the relationship between seniority and spouse satisfaction in a nationally representative sample of the South Korean general population. ...
... However, few studies have specifically examined the effects of age on reports of marital satisfaction among older adults [18]. Whereas some Western researchers have reported a U-shaped relationship between marriage duration and marital satisfaction [5,19], the significant decline in marital satisfaction with age observed in this study indicates prospective study is needed to further explore this phenomenon. ...
... Drefahl (2010) found that having an older spouse increases mortality risk for both men and women, while a younger partner reduces it for men. Lee and McKinnish (2018) suggest that both men and women are more satisfied in marriages with younger partners. Moreover, Choo and Siow (2006) predicted that couples with a smaller age difference achieve the highest utility. ...
... Coles and Francesconi (2011) assumed that women and men would like to find younger partners because of better fitness; an older partner would be less fit and reduce utility. Lee and McKinnish (2018) also found that couples of different ages have lower marital satisfaction than couples of similar ages. They speculated it is because a differently aged couple finds it difficult to have consent to adjust consumption when facing economic shock. ...
Preprint
Full-text available
The literature has established that women marry older men with greater economic resources. This study builds upon and expands this understanding by introducing a theoretical model and subsequent empirical examinations. Given a woman's age and income, the model demonstrates that if she chooses to marry an older man, his income must be significantly higher to offset the positive age difference, which is considered a “bad” good. This leads to a positive correlation between a husband and a wife’s income and age gaps. Also, our findings suggest that high-income women may face challenges finding a quality husband. Empirical estimations using Chinese household survey data further support the model predictions, showing a positive correlation between the income gap and the age gap in newly married couples and a negative correlation between a woman’s income and the likelihood of marriage.
... Personality traits, demographic and economic variables, explaining marital satisfaction (MS) and happiness among spouses, have often been studied separately (Bian et al., 2015;Otis, 2017). Drivers of MS include personality characteristics (Barelds, 2005;Gattis et al., 2004), age differences (Lee and McKinnish, 2018), and gender differences . Furthermore, factors such as gender inequality (Chen et al., 2023), intrahousehold bargaining power , and subjective social status (Leng et al., 2021) influence happiness of the spouses. ...
Article
Full-text available
Introduction Considering the traditional Confucian values prevalent in Chinese society, we study the effects of the spouses’ personalities and household sociodemographic circumstances on the marital satisfaction of marriage partners. Methods We evaluate the factors that contribute to marital satisfaction, using the 2018 wave of the Chinese Family Panel Survey, including 6,603 households. We use information on both spouses’ Big-Five personality traits, and marital satisfaction. In addition, the effects of the household’s sociodemographic factors on the spouses’ marital satisfaction are estimated. We employ the Actor–Partner Interdependence Model to estimate the effects, using simultaneous equation modeling. Results We find significant actor effects of personality, i.e., agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and extroversion, but few partner effects on marital satisfaction. In addition to other socioeconomic effects, we find strong actor effects of subjective social status on marital satisfaction for both spouses. The wife’s level of education had a negative effect on her marital satisfaction. Discussion The effects of the spouses’ personalities and sociodemographic circumstances on their marital satisfaction fit the Confucian values fostered in China. The wife’s double burden of having a job and taking care of household duties, negatively affecting her marital satisfaction, may be alleviated by proper government policies.
... In this context, the marital satisfaction of men is gaining attention as an important factor in the family and society. Thus, some recent studies have examined the effect of gender on marital satisfaction [13], once again emphasizing the need to understand the difference between genders in the perception of work-family strains by gender role norms [14]. ...
Article
Full-text available
Background/Objectives: This study aimed to examine the relationship between Korean fathers’ work-family strains and gains and marital satisfaction and to validate the mediating effect of parenting stress in the relationship. Methods: This study used the 14th-year survey data of the Panel Study of Korean Children (PSKC) conducted by the Korea Institute of Child Care and Education (KICCE), the latest available data. The PSKC is a longitudinal study of children’s growth and development from birth in the Republic of Korea. After excluding datasets containing missing values from the data collected from 2150 respondents, the data were extracted from the survey responses collected from 1130 respondents, and descriptive statistical analysis, path analysis, and mediating effect analysis were conducted. Results: First, Korean fathers’ work-family strains had a positive (+) influence on parenting stress (β = 0.658, p < 0.001). Second, Korean fathers’ work-family strains had a negative (−) influence on marital satisfaction (β = −0.185, p < 0.001). Third, Korean fathers’ work-family gains did not have a statistically significant influence on parenting stress (β = 0.016, p = 0.632). Fourth, Korean fathers’ work-family gains had a positive (+) influence on marital satisfaction (β = 0.381, p < 0.001). Fifth, Korean fathers’ parenting stress did not have a statistically significant influence on marital satisfaction (β = 0.011, p = 0.783). Sixth, the indirect effect of work-family strains on marital satisfaction via parenting stress (β = 0.013, 95% Bias-corrected CI = −0.042∼0.075) was statistically significant, and specifically, it had a partial mediating effect. Seventh, the indirect effect of work-family gains on marital satisfaction via parenting stress (β = 0.028, 95% Bias-corrected CI = 0.005∼0.051) was statistically significant, and specifically, it had a partial mediating effect. Conclusions: This study aims to provide the basic data for various family support policies for fathers by understanding the current status of work-family balance for fathers in modern society, as well as by examining the effects of parenting stress in the relationship with marital satisfaction.
... A feminist movement advocating for gender equality emerged in the 20th century, but the process is slow, and women still bear a disproportionate share of unpaid labor and caregiving duties. The age gap between couples significantly impacts marital satisfaction and stability, with high age gaps leading to issues like stepchildren, compatibility issues, health concerns, socialization problems, and criticism (Lee & McKinnish, 2018). Many divorcees report patriarchal behaviors from their spouses, which serve as a divorce simulator. ...
Article
This qualitative research explores the changing reasons of divorce in District Bahawalnagar over the period of two decades i.e., the decades of 1990 and 2000, as the world witnessed the rapidly changing dynamics of world of information and technology at the turn of the century. The sample of the study comprised of 10 participants, including 5 divorced females from 1990s and 5 from the decades of 2000. The tool of data collection was in-depth interviews. For the purpose of exploring the changing priorities of marriages and the importance of mental health and interpersonal relationships, a thematic semi-structured interview guide was prepared. The theoretical lens of social exchange theory was used in this research and data analysis was done using the technique of thematic analysis. The study found that traditional gender roles have changed, and women are becoming more empowered. The increasing divorce rate can be normalized in the future, but the legal system in Pakistan is not helping women secure legal rights.
Article
Precocious exits from adolescence via early union formation are often argued to represent a strong risk factor for intimate partner violence (IPV) victimization. However, causal evidence for this claim is scant. This study examines the impact of teen union formation (before age 18) on experiences of IPV in Brazil and Colombia, where early family transitions are common and levels of interpersonal violence are high. Using data that allow instrumenting for teen union formation with age at menarche, results show that both Brazilian and Colombian women who start a co‐residential union before age 18 have a higher probability of experiencing psychological violence from partners. Early cohabitation is also linked to greater risk of past‐year sexual abuse among Black/Brown Brazilian women, and lifetime sexual IPV in Colombia, including among women who partnered once. Among testable potential pathways, age‐heterogamy (male partner being older) explains part of the results, but lower educational attainment among early cohabiting women emerges as a key driver in both countries. Education remains a powerful policy tool to confront both forms of gender‐based violence in South America.
Article
The aim of this study is to examine the mediating role of emotion regulation difficulties in the relationship between conflict resolution styles and marital satisfaction in married individuals. A total of 706 married individuals, 234 men and 472 women, constitute the study’s working group. The ages of the participants ranged from 21 to 60, with an average age of 38.45. As a result of the analysis conducted within the scope of the study It has been found that positive conflict resolution, retreat and subordination conflict resolution styles are positively related with marriage satisfaction, while negative conflict resolution styles are negatively related with marriage satisfaction. The results show that positive conflict resolution, negative conflict resolution, retreat and subordination conflict resolution styles have a direct effect on marital satisfaction, but this effect does not disappear when emotion regulation difficulties is controlled, so emotion regulation difficulties play a partial mediator role.
Article
Full-text available
Among the factors related to marital disruption, age assortative mating (who marries whom in terms of age) has received less attention than others. In this study, we study the association between partners’ age difference and marital disruption in Italy, a late-comer country in divorce legislation and highly conservative in its culture and institutions. We also show how this association varies across marriage cohorts. We employ data from “Families, social subjects and life cycle” (FSS), collected in 2016 by the Italian National Institute of Statistics (Istat). We analyse micro-level retrospective information on first-marriage histories between the 1970s and the 1990s through an event-history approach. Results show that age hypogamous couples (where the woman is older than the man) have a higher likelihood of marital disruption compared to couples where the wife is the same age or younger than her husband. However, this higher risk reduces among the youngest cohorts. We discuss the possible drivers of this change in light of cultural changes that occurred in recent decades
Article
Full-text available
We consider testing for weak instruments in a model with multiple endogenous variables. Unlike Stock and Yogo (2005), who considered a weak instruments problem where the rank of the matrix of reduced form parameters is near zero, here we consider a weak instruments problem of a near rank reduction of one in the matrix of reduced form parameters. For example, in a two-variable model, we consider weak instrument asymptotics of the form where and are the parameters in the two reduced-form equations, is a vector of constants and is the sample size. We investigate the use of a conditional first-stage -statistic along the lines of the proposal by Angrist and Pischke (2009) and show that, unless , the variance in the denominator of their -statistic needs to be adjusted in order to get a correct asymptotic distribution when testing the hypothesis . We show that a corrected conditional -statistic is equivalent to the Cragg and Donald (1993) minimum eigenvalue rank test statistic, and is informative about the maximum total relative bias of the 2SLS estimator and the Wald tests size distortions. When in the two-variable model, or when there are more than two endogenous variables, further information over and above the Cragg–Donald statistic can be obtained about the nature of the weak instrument problem by computing the conditional first-stage -statistics.
Article
Full-text available
Sex-differences in parental investment and in age-related fertility variations are expected to have shaped the sexual strategies for both sexes. To investigate sex-differences in sexual interest and sexual activity as a function of both the respondents’ and the objects’ age, we gathered observations from a population-based sample of 12,656 Finns. We found that women are interested in same-aged to somewhat older men and that this pattern displays itself across the measured life-span and that men show a tendency to be sexually interested in women in their mid-twenties. This tendency was also notable when the men themselves were younger or older than this age. Moreover, we found that sexual activity more closely mimics women’s than men’s sexual interest. We conclude that women show larger developmental plasticity than men with regard to the desired object’s age and that men’s heterosexual activity likely is constrained by female choice.
Article
In direct contrast to conventional wisdom and most economic models of marital age gaps, we present robust evidence that men and women who are married to differently aged spouses are negatively selected. Empirical results show lower cognitive ability, lower educational attainment, lower occupational wages, lower earnings, and less attractive appearance among those married to a differently aged spouse. These results, obtained using samples of first marriages and controlling for age of marriage, are consistent with a model in which individuals with more schooling and more upwardly mobile occupations interact more heavily with similarly aged peers and are ultimately more likely to marry similarly aged spouses
Article
This study opens with an analysis of long-term trends in divorce and remarriage. Next is a display and interpretation of the sharply upward trend in divorce rates by age from 1960 to 1980 and their subsequent slight decline. Remarriage rates by age are shown to have risen during the early 1960s and then to have fallen substantially through the 1970s and more slowly during the early 1980s. Research on changes between 1975 and 1980 for women who had become divorced before the age of 30 years revealed that more of the divorced mothers were remarrying and doing so rather soon after divorce, while more of the divorced childless women were remaining divorced and were doing so for a longer period of time. Young divorcees without a high school diploma had consistently the highest proportions remarried, regardless of how many children they had before divorce or how long they had been divorced, while those with college education had consistently the lowest proportions remarried.
Article
This paper examines age-heterogamous marriages. We test the notion that such marriages are most prevalent among the upper classes, and the belief that they exhibit poorer marital quality than age-similar unions. The first expectation was not supported: age-discrepant unions are clearly more prevalent among lower classes. Second, the analysis yielded no significant differences in marital quality among couples from various age-dissimilar categories. The findings contradict conventional wisdom and suggest the need to re-examine popular stereotypes surrounding age heterogamy in mate selection.
Article
Using a repeated cross-sectional design to trace marital success and failure in five American 10-year marriage cohorts from 1973 to 1994 reveals no convincing evidence of an increase in aggregate-level marital success at any duration in the first five decades after first marriage. The higher mean level of marital quality in late-term than in mid-term marriages shown by cross-sectional studies apparently results largely from cohort differences in marital success.
Article
Research focusing upon the heterogamy hypothesis, which links spouse difference to low marital quality, has produced inconsistent findings. We examined the hypothesis with data from 200 maritally intact, intergenerationally linked Puerto Rican families living in New York City. Marital heterogamy was measured by the between-spouse difference in education, age, and adherence to culture-specific values. Four specific methodological refinements were incorporated into the examination, two expanding the customary range of independent and dependent variables, one attending to the "identification problem" of confounding effects, and the last focusing upon conditions that could qualify the hypothesis. The findings confirm the existence of homogamous patterns based upon age, education, and adherence to cultural values but do not support the hypothesis that heterogamous dissimilarities in such variables shape marital quality. The findings are discussed in the context of processes linking marital choice to marital quality.
Article
Much empirical evidence shows that female and male partners look alike along a variety of attributes. It is, however, unclear how this positive sorting comes about because marriage is an equilibrium outcome arising from a process that entails searching, meeting, and choosing one another. This study takes advantage of unique data to shed light on the forces driving choices at the earliest stage of a relationship. Both women and men value physical attributes, such as age and weight, and reveal that their dating choices are assortative along several traits. Importantly, meeting opportunities have a substantial role in determining dating proposals.