TY - JOUR
T1 - Family embeddedness and older adult mortality in the United States
AU - Patterson, Sarah E.
AU - Margolis, Rachel
AU - Verdery, Ashton M.
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgements: This work was supported by the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health (T32AG000221), the Joint Programming Initiative ‘More Years Better Lives’ funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (MYB150262), and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (435–2017–0618; 890–2016–9000). Additionally, we acknowledge assistance provided by a National Institute on Aging Award (R01AG060949) and the Penn State Population Research Institute, which is supported by an infrastructure grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (P2CHD041025). The HRS (Health and Retirement Study) is sponsored by the National Institute on Aging (U01AG009740) and conducted by the University of Michigan. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
PY - 2020/9/1
Y1 - 2020/9/1
N2 - Do different operationalizations of family structure offer different understandings of the links between family structure and older adult mortality? Using the American Health and Retirement Study (N = 29,665), we examine mortality risks by three measures of family structure: whether respondents have different family statuses (e.g. married vs. unmarried), volume of family members available (e.g. having one vs. two living immediate family members), and family embeddedness (e.g. having neither spouse nor child vs. having spouse but no child). We focus on three kin types: partner/spouse, children, and siblings. We find that differences in empirical estimates across measures of family structure are not dramatic, but that family embeddedness can show some additional heterogeneity in mortality patterns over family status variables or the volume of ties. This paper tests different ways of operationalizing family structure to study mortality outcomes and advances our understanding of how family functions as a key social determinant of health.
AB - Do different operationalizations of family structure offer different understandings of the links between family structure and older adult mortality? Using the American Health and Retirement Study (N = 29,665), we examine mortality risks by three measures of family structure: whether respondents have different family statuses (e.g. married vs. unmarried), volume of family members available (e.g. having one vs. two living immediate family members), and family embeddedness (e.g. having neither spouse nor child vs. having spouse but no child). We focus on three kin types: partner/spouse, children, and siblings. We find that differences in empirical estimates across measures of family structure are not dramatic, but that family embeddedness can show some additional heterogeneity in mortality patterns over family status variables or the volume of ties. This paper tests different ways of operationalizing family structure to study mortality outcomes and advances our understanding of how family functions as a key social determinant of health.
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U2 - 10.1080/00324728.2020.1817529
DO - 10.1080/00324728.2020.1817529
M3 - Article
C2 - 33016247
AN - SCOPUS:85092084724
VL - 74
SP - 415
EP - 435
JO - Population Studies
JF - Population Studies
SN - 0032-4728
IS - 3
ER -