We examine levels and changes in psychological wellbeing upon widowhood and divorce, the adjustment over time to these events, and the role of financial resources in psychological adjustment to these role changes.  The Wisconsin Longitudinal Study and the Health and Retirement Study are the longitudinal surveys from which the data on women’s progression into widowhood and divorce are drawn.

There is an extensive literature on the economic status of widows and widowers and changes in income and assets that occur upon widowhood.[1]  Another body of literature has examined the effect of marital status on psychological wellbeing.  This literature is generally consistent in finding that marriage matters a great deal to happiness, that women report higher levels of happiness than men, and that widows record lower levels of psychological well being than do married women.  A few studies look specifically at widows’ psychological wellbeing over duration of widowhood, but there is little literature that relates the psychological well-being for widows and widowers to their economic resources. Easterlin (2007) summarizes studies showing that the greater happiness at younger ages reported by women than men reverses with age and infers that this reversal is due to the increasing widowhood of women and retirement of men.[2]  

The proposed conference presentation originates in a paper prepared for the 2007 International Research Seminar on “Issues in Social Security” conducted by the Foundation for International Studies of Social Security and recently published in a volume on Happiness and Social Security. [3]

The purpose of that paper was to understand the separate role of financial resources and widowhood on the psychological well-being of widows and widowers.  The WLS is a sample of young women and men first interviewed in 1957 and for the fourth time in 2004 when they were 63-65.  This data set enabled a study of the impact of relatively early widowhood—for some that occurred in their 50’s—on subjective financial and psychological well-being. 

In that paper we found that in the cross-section (at the 2004 interview) for men and women, both married and widowed, financial satisfaction was shaped primarily by wealth and health with widowhood and its duration having a fairly small or no effect.  This is surprising only because the widowhood literature suggests that widowhood itself results in greater financial insecurity regardless of the actual resources bequeathed to the survivor.  Compared to their married peers (in gender and age) widowhood for males did not affect financial satisfaction and only one group of widows (those widowed 3-7 years) were on average less satisfied than were married women with their financial status. 

Although widowhood did not predict financial satisfaction, satisfaction with the individual’s financial status was a strong predictor of psychological well-being regardless of widowhood duration or whether the individual was married or widowed.  Controlling for financial satisfaction, widows and widowers were more depressed, using the CES-D scale, than were married men and women.[4]  Both shorter and longer-term widows were more depressed than were married women.  This alone would suggest that there is little psychological adaptation to widowhood.  However, distinguishing types of depressive affects reveals a more complex story.  More recently widowed women have more days of negative affect and fewer positive days.  Over time these measures of psychological wellbeing approach those for their married peers, except for interpersonal/depressed affect days—i.e., when they felt lonely and sad.  It appears that while sleep may improve over time, loneliness is a more permanent characteristic of widowhood.

. 

This 2007 paper is part of longer-term work on the relationship between psychological wellbeing and financial wellbeing among elderly individuals.  We are currently engaged in a longitudinal investigation of psychological well-being, taking into account initial levels of psychological well-being among WLS widows, and duplicating our analysis using the nationally representative Health and Retirement  Survey data.  Results using the WLS data confound the effects of widowhood duration and age of widowhood since long-term widows in the WLS were all widowed at a younger age.  The HRS data allow us to separate the effect of age at and duration of widowhood on psychological adjustment to widowhood.

Preliminary results with the HRS are consistent with WLS results—widowhood itself appears not to affect financial satisfaction, even though widows (but not widowers) are more likely to report difficulty with meeting financial obligations.  This is in sharp contrast to divorced women and men who report markedly lower (and statistically significant) financial satisfaction.  The longitudinal data also allow a more nuanced view of the widowhood event.  We find that women about to be widowed report greater levels of psychological distress than are their married peers whose husbands are still alive in 2004 (in the WLS) or 2006 (in the HRS). 

We anticipate our paper will include finding on the effect of health insurance and access to health care on the psychological well being of married and widowed men and women.  An intriguing finding of the first paper is that having no health insurance coverage among these pre-Medicare eligible women was associated greater satisfaction, both financial and psychological.  It may be that the uninsured are a highly select group that is less likely to stress about lack of insurance as well as other aspects of life.  It may also be that they have access to and prefer forms of care (e.g., alternative medicine, yoga) that are not covered by standard insurance policies in the U.S. that they therefore forego while still receiving care that increases one’s sense of well-being.

From the 2007 paper and our more recent results, we conclude that not only do material goods matter to psychological well-being upon the death of a spouse but that resources reduce the psychological stress of that event. 

Contact information

Karen Holden

Professor of Public Affairs and Consumer Science

1300 Linden Drive

Madison, WI 53706

[1]  Several papers by the Holden and others have looked at wealth and income changes associated with widowhood.  See:

Zick, C. and K. C. Holden (2000)”An Assessment of the Wealth Holdings of Recent Widows” Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences: Social Science 55(2):S90-S97.

Holden, K.C. & Smock, P.J. (1991) "The Economic Costs of Marital Dissolution: Why Do Women Bear a Disproportionate Cost?" Annual Review of Sociology, 17:51-78.

Burkhauser, R.V., Butler, J.S., & Holden, K.C.  (1991) "How the Death of a Spouse Affects Economic Well-Being After Retirement:  A Hazard Model Approach."  Social Science Quarterly, 72(3):504-519.

[2] Richard A. Easterlin (2007). “Explaining happiness.” PNAS 2003;100;11176-11183

[3] Holden, K., J. Kim and A. Fontes (2008) “Happiness as a Complex Financial Phenomenon: The Financial and Psychological Adjustment to Widowhood in the U.S.”  J. Bradshaw (ed.) Social Security, Happiness and Well-being. International Studies in Social Security, Volume 14. Foundation for International Studies on Social Security

[4] Results were not changed if income and asset value were included instead of satisfaction with financial status.