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New Study Finds Spouses Often Mirror Each Others’ Health
A new study by a Brigham Young University professor shows a strong
association between the health of people and the health of their spouses.
“It turns out that the health of your spouse is as strong an indicator for
your own health as your economic status—two proven health indicators,” says Sven
Wilson, an assistant professor of political science who specializes in health
economics and demography. His study is reported in the September 2002 issue of
the Social Science and Medicine Journal.
“When addressing health issues,
physicians and policy makers should remember the patients involved will often
have spouses likewise struggling with their health,” Wilson says. “Consequently,
many health policies should be focused on families, not just individuals.” He
also said that individuals who have an ill spouse may want to reevaluate their
financial plans, since a partner’s condition may be an indicator of their own
undetected health problems.
Previous research has established that married
individuals are collectively healthier than singles. In this study, Wilson
wanted to test his notion that individuals within marriages would often mirror
one another’s health. He obtained lifestyle and demographic information gathered
from more than 4,700 couples in their 50s from the Health and Retirement Study,
a 1992 nationwide survey. He then used statistical models to test how much the
subjects’ traits influenced their overall health, as measured by three different
diagnostic tools.
Wilson found strong evidence for a correlation in spouses’
health. For instance, a man in his early 50s who is in excellent health has
about a 5 percent chance of having a wife in fair health and a 2 percent chance
of being married to a wife in poor health. But a man in poor health has 24
percent chance of being married to a woman in fair health and a 12 percent
chance of being married to a woman in poor health.
Wilson says several
factors explain much of the correlation he found. “We know that people tend to
choose spouses with similar backgrounds, and we also know that level of
education and economic status are proven indicators of health status,” Wilson
said. “So if people with the same health-related characteristics are marrying
each other, it stands to reason they would have similar health.”
Wilson also
found that couples tend to make similar choices after they are married that will
affect their health, such as how much to smoke, drink, or what foods to eat.
He
also suspects other causes for the correlation he found between spouses’
health—factors that were not observable in the data he studied.
“Spouses
obviously share environmental risks—they breathe the same air and are exposed to
the same germs.” Wilson said. “Another factor at work is that spouses share many
of the same emotional stresses, such as problems with children. There is also
the burden of being a caregiver for a spouse in poor health, which may take a
significant toll on the caregiving spouse.”
Because of the propensity for
shared illness, Wilson emphasizes the need for the national healthcare debate to
acknowledge the importance of examining solutions at the household level, rather
than the individual level.
“When spouses find themselves both in poor
health, they each lack the support a healthy spouse would provide and both face
the additional stress of dealing with the sick loved one,” Wilson said. “In
these cases, two sick spouses add up to a serious drain on the financial and
other resources of the family and the public.”
--Michael Smart
Marriage & Families Kicks off Fund-Raising Campaign
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