Marital Status and Depressive Symptoms Over Time: Age and Gender Variations

Abstract

Guided by a life course perspective, this study investigated the contemporaneous and longitudinal relationships between marital status and depressive symptoms for men and women, and examined if age moderates these relationships. Data came from 9,507 individuals who responded to the first two waves of the National Survey of Families and Households. Men and women in first marriages are better off than most other marital status categories with regard to depressive symptoms, and for some groups, this advantage becomes more pronounced over time. Noteworthy age related differences in these relationships were observed for women, but not for men.