Health and Marital Experience in an Urban Population

Abstract

A probability sample of 4,452 households in Alameda County, California yielded 6,928 adult respondents to a questionnaire survey on health and way of life. Analysis was confined to the 5,373 white and black people who were currently married, separated or divorced at the time of the survey. Divorced people were somewhat more likely than married people generally to report physical disability, chronic illness, neurosis, depression and isolation, but those who had remarried and were happy in their new marriages were less likely to report health problems than the unhappily married who had never divorced. Unhappily married people were less healthy than either divorced or happily married people of the same race, sex and age. These findings indicate that (1) physical and psychological health are associated with marital happiness regardless of marital history, and (2) at the same time, divorce and remarriage tend to select the healthier members of the unhappily married population.