Concordance of health states in couples: analysis of self-reported, nurse administered and blood-based biomarker data in the UK Understanding Society panel

Publication type

Journal Article

Authors

Publication date

December 15, 2017

Abstract:

We use self-reported health measures, nurse-administered measurements and blood-based biomarkers to examine the concordance between health states of partners in marital/cohabiting relationships in the UK. A model of cumulative health exposures is used to interpret the empirical pattern of between-partner health correlation in relation to elapsed relationship duration, allowing us to distinguish non-causal correlation due to assortative mating from potentially causal effects of shared lifestyle and environmental factors. We find important differences between the results for different health indicators, with strongest homogamy correlations observed for adiposity, followed by blood pressure, heart rate, inflammatory markers and cholesterol, and also self-assessed general health and functional difficulties. We find no evidence of a “dose-response relationship” for marriage duration, and show that this suggests – perhaps counterintuitively – that shared lifestyle factors and homogamous partner selection make roughly equal contributions to the concordance we observe in most of the health measures we examine.

Published in

Journal of Health Economics

Volume and page numbers

Volume: 56 , p.87 -102

DOI

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2017.09.010

ISSN

1676296

Subjects

Notes

Open Access

Open Access funded by Economic and Social Research Council

Under a Creative Commons license

#524618

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• Concordance of health states in couples. Analysis of self-reported, nurse administered and blood-based biomarker data in Understanding Society

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