Food Security and Health Outcomes following Gray Divorce
Persistent URL
Author(s)
Zhao, Hang
Andreyeva, Tatiana
Sun, Xiaohan
Date Issued
February 24, 2024
Abstract
The study evaluates the immediate and long-term consequences of gray divorce (i.e., marital dissolution after age 50) for the food security, depression, and disability of older Americans. Staggered Difference-in-Difference models were fitted to a nationally representative longitudinal sample of adults aged ≥ 50 years from the Health and Retirement Study, 1998–2018. Food insecurity and disability increase in the year of gray divorce and remain significantly elevated for up to six years or more following the event, consistent with the chronic strain model of gray divorce. Gray divorce has particularly adverse consequences for the food security of older women, while no gender differences were observed for disability. Increasing trends in gray divorce have important negative implications for food security and health of older Americans, particularly women, who appear to be less prepared to financially withstand a marital collapse in older age. Targeted policies to provide nutrition assistance and support in reemployment might be necessary to reduce the burden of food insecurity in the wake of gray divorce among women.
Journal
Nutrients
Department
Business and Economics
Computer and Information Science
Citation
Zhao, Hang, Tatiana Andreyeva, and Xiaohan Sun. 2024. "Food Security and Health Outcomes following Gray Divorce" Nutrients 16, no. 5: 633. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu16050633
Publisher
MDPI
Version of Article
Published version
DOI
10.3390/nu16050633
ISSN
2072-6643
Rights
Copyright: © 2024 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).
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