Shared Lives, Shared Resources: Partner’s Socioeconomic Status and Health in Couple Relationships

• In Event: 3129 - Section on Medical Sociology Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 12. Marriage, Relationships, and Parenting

Abstract

Partners in intimate relationships share resources and life experiences, yet we know little about how one partner’s socioeconomic characteristics influence the other partner’s health. Using data from the 1997-2016 IPUMS-NHIS, we explore the socioeconomic profiles of different-sex married, same-sex married, different-sex cohabiting, and same- sex cohabiting couples. Then, we investigate whether partner’s education and employment status are associated with an individual’s self-rated health for all couples, and for the four types of couples described above. We find that different-sex couples experience more consistent associations between partner socioeconomic status (SES) and health than same-sex couples and that women experience more consistent associations of partner SES than men. We explore possible explanations for differences in the association between partner SES and health for men and women, spouses and cohabitors, and same-sex and different-sex couples.

Authors

• Russell Leroy Spiker, Vanderbilt University

• Corinne Reczek, Ohio State University