A new study from scholars at the University of Michigan, Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore, and Yale University has found significant racial, ethnic, and sex disparities in the marital status and living arrangements of older adults in the United States.
“Marriage and living arrangements in later life look very different across racial and ethnic groups,” said senior author Emma Zang, associate professor of sociology, biostatistics, and global affairs at Yale University. “These disparities are important because later-life living situations shape people’s social and financial security, and policies intended to support older Americans are often structured around traditional assumptions about marriage that most closely fit the experiences of White Americans.”
In an analysis of over 20,000 people over age 50 who participated in the Health and Retirement Study between 1992 and 2018, the study authors found that White adults spend the most years married of any group, averaging 25.5 years for White men and 18 years for White women. For the Hispanic population, men average 23.4 years married and women average 15.5 years married. Notably, Black men and women spend significantly fewer years married, averaging 17.6 years and 9.7 years, respectively. These disparities are partially explained by differences in years living while divorced. The study authors found Black women spend some 12.6 years divorced, compared to 7.3 years for White women.
White adults were also found to spend the highest share of their lives past age 50 living with a spouse, at about 81.4 percent for men and 52.5 percent for women. Hispanic men and women spend 78 percent and 43.2 percent of this time living with a spouse, respectively, while Black men and women spend, respectively, 67 percent and 28.2 percent of their later years living with a spouse. Furthermore, older Black adults, especially women, spend the most time living alone, averaging about 19 percent for men and 36 percent for women.
“Policy designs that favor long marriages can exacerbate inequality for groups whose marriages tend to be shorter,” said Dr. Zang. “In the case of Social Security spousal benefits, Black women are being systematically excluded from an important form of old-age protection.”
