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

Davillas, Apostolos and Pudney, Stephen (2017) Concordance of health states in couples:Analysis of self-reported, nurse administered and blood-based biomarker data in the UK Understanding Society panel. Journal of Health Economics, 56. pp. 87-102. ISSN 0167-6296

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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.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: biomarkers,health,homogamy,spousal concordance,understanding society,health policy,public health, environmental and occupational health,social sciences(all),economics, econometrics and finance(all),health(social science),sdg 3 - good health and well-being ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/2700/2719
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Depositing User: LivePure Connector
Date Deposited: 04 Feb 2020 04:43
Last Modified: 21 Apr 2023 00:23
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/73966
DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2017.09.010

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