Does Marriage Protect Health? A Birth Cohort Comparison*

Abstract

Objective: Marriage is considered to protect health via multiple mechanisms, but this effect may have weakened as marriage has become deinstitutionalized in the United States. This article tests for cross-cohort decline in the protective effect of marriage. Methods: Change in the association between marital status and subjective general health over three birth cohorts was estimated using the 1984–2011 Panel Study of Income Dynamics (N = 12,373). Analyses included least-squares, random-effects, and fixed-effects regression models, representing increasingly conservative approaches to ruling out selection bias. Results: Despite associations between marriage and better health among both men and women, estimated by least-squares and random-effects regression, the fixed-effects models found health improvement relative to remaining unmarried only in very long (≥10 year) marriages, and only among women. This effect was completely attenuated among women in the youngest birth cohort. Conclusion: The modest benefit of marriage for women's subjective health has eroded in recent cohorts.