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The marital satisfaction of differently aged couples

Version 2 2024-06-06, 12:44
Version 1 2017-09-20, 11:24
journal contribution
posted on 2024-06-06, 12:44 authored by WS Lee, T McKinnish
We investigate how the marital age gap affects the evolution of marital satisfaction over the duration of marriage using household panel data from Australia. We find that men tend to be more satisfied with younger wives and less satisfied with older wives. Interestingly, women likewise tend to be more satisfied with younger husbands and less satisfied with older husbands. Marital satisfaction declines with marital duration for both men and women in differently aged couples relative to those in similarly aged couples. These relative declines erase the initial higher levels of marital satisfaction experienced by men married to younger wives and women married to younger husbands within 6 to 10 years of marriage. A possible mechanism is that differently aged couples are less resilient to negative shocks compared to similarly aged couples, which we find some supportive evidence for.

History

Journal

Journal of population economics

Volume

31

Pagination

337-362

Location

Berlin, Germany

ISSN

0933-1433

eISSN

1432-1475

Language

eng

Publication classification

C Journal article, C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

2017, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany

Issue

2

Publisher

Springer Verlag