Moving Together? Living Arrangement Transitions, Stress, and Life Satisfaction across Race and Gender

• In Event: Race, Gender, and Class Roundtables Session
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 7) Health, Well-Being, and Social Conditions

Abstract

This study conceptualized living arrangements in later life as a dynamic process reflecting the balance between individual needs and contextual resources. Drawing on the stress process model and intersectionality framework, it examines whether financial decline and functional health decline trigger living arrangement transitions and in turn shape life satisfaction, and whether this mechanism vary across race–gender groups.
Using longitudinal data from the 2016–2022 Health and Retirement Study (N = 5,870) and employing generalized structural equation modeling (GSEM), results show financial decline reduced life satisfaction (total effect b = −0.07, p < .01), with 82.4% of the association mediated through transitions (total indirect effect b = −0.06, p < .01). Indirect pathways included stable living alone (b = −0.02, p < .001), stable living with others (b = −0.01, p < .05), and transitions from living with a spouse to living alone (b = −0.02, p < .05). In contrast, functional health decline increased the likelihood of transitioning from living alone to shared coresidence (RRR = 1.20, p < .05) but had no significant indirect effect; its impact on life satisfaction operated primarily through direct pathways (total effect b = −0.20, p < .001; direct effect b = −0.16, p < .001), with only 19.4% mediated.
Stratified analyses reveal intersectional heterogeneity. Among Non-Hispanic White women, financial decline produced the largest total reduction in life satisfaction (b = −0.11, p < .05), with significant indirect effects (b = −0.09, p < .05). In contrast, transitions from spousal households to shared coresidence predicted increased life satisfaction among Hispanic women (b = 0.63, p < .01), including in response to health decline (b = 0.59, p < .01). These findings highlight living arrangement transitions as a key contextual mechanism through which later-life inequality is both reproduced and, in certain contexts, mitigated.

Authors

• Wuyi Dong, University of Massachusetts, Boston

• Yan-Jhu Su, Penn State