The Life Expectancy of Older Couples and Surviving Spouses

Principal Investigator(s):  View help for Principal Investigator(s) Janice Compton, University of Manitoba; Robert A. Pollak, Washington University in St. Louis

Version:  View help for Version V2

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Project Citation: 

Compton, Janice, and Pollak, Robert A. . The Life Expectancy of Older Couples and Surviving Spouses. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2021-04-26. https://doi.org/10.3886/E138021V2

Project Description

Summary:  View help for Summary Individual life expectancies provide information for individuals making retirement decisions and for policy makers. For couples, analogous measures are the expected years both spouses will be alive (joint life expectancy) and the expected years the surviving spouse will be a widow or widower (survivor life expectancy). Using individual life expectancies to calculate summary measures for couples is intuitively appealing but yield misleading results, overstating joint life expectancy and dramatically understating survivor life expectancies. This implies that standard "individual life cycle models" are misleading for couples and that “couple life cycle models” must be substantially more complex. Using the CDC life tables for 2010, we construct joint and survivor life expectancy measures for randomly formed couples. The couples we form are defined by age, race and ethnicity, and education. Due to assortative marriage, inequalities in individual life expectancies are compounded into inequalities in joint and survivor life expectancies. We also calculate life expectancy measures for randomly formed couples for the 1930-2010 decennial years. Trends over time show how the relative rate of decrease in the mortality rates of men and women affect joint and survivor life expectancies. Because our couple life expectancy measures are based on randomly formed couples, they do not capture the effects of differences in spouses’ premarital characteristics (apart from sex, age, race and ethnicity, and, in some cases, education) or of correlations in spouses’ experiences or behaviors during marriage. However, they provide benchmarks which have been sorely lacking in the public discourse.
Funding Sources:  View help for Funding Sources Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (G-B2012-24)

Scope of Project

Subject Terms:  View help for Subject Terms mortality; couple; life expectancy
Geographic Coverage:  View help for Geographic Coverage United States
Time Period(s):  View help for Time Period(s) 1930 – 2010
Collection Date(s):  View help for Collection Date(s) 2017 – 2020
Universe:  View help for Universe Women aged 60 and their husbands of any age.
Data Type(s):  View help for Data Type(s) administrative records data; census/enumeration data
Collection Notes:  View help for Collection Notes Mortality data was downloaded from:
CDC, National Center for Health Statistics. Life Tables. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/life_tables.htm. August 3, 2017.  

Census data was downloaded from:
Ruggles S, Genadek K, Goeken R, Grover J, Sobek M. Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 7.0 [dataset]. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2017. https://doi.org/10.18128/D010.V7.0.  

Methodology

Data Source:  View help for Data Source Raw data are collected from three sources:
1.         Census data:  Ruggles S, Genadek K, Goeken R, Grover J, Sobek M. Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 7.0 [dataset]. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2017. https://doi.org/10.18128/D010.V7.0.
2.         Mortality rates: CDC, National Center for Health Statistics. Life Tables. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/life_tables.htm. August 3, 2017.
3.         Mortality rates by education: Bound J, Geronimus AT, Rodriguez JM, Waidmann TA. Measuring recent apparent declines in longevity:  the role of increasing educational attainment. Health Affairs. 2015;34(12):2167-73.  
Weights:  View help for Weights IPUMS variable perwt is used in the analysis.
Unit(s) of Observation:  View help for Unit(s) of Observation Married couples, wife is aged 60. Years 1920-2010.
Geographic Unit:  View help for Geographic Unit United States

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Published Versions

V2 [2021-04-26]

V1 [2021-04-18]

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