How do cohabitation and marital status affect mortality risk? Results from a cohort study in Thailand

Jiaying Zhao · Matthew James Kelly · Vasoontara Yiengprugsawan · Sam‐ang Seubsman · Adrian C. Sleigh

7 citations0/0 files storedBMJ Open

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Family Dynamics and Relationships Marriage and Family Dynamics Health disparities and outcomes

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To examine the relationship between baseline union status (ie, including marriage and cohabitation) and mortality, paying attention to gender differentials, through an 11-year follow-up of a large cohort in Thailand. DESIGN: Cohort data from Thai Cohort Study (TCS) were linked official death records over an 11-year follow-up period. SETTING: Community-based adults in Thailand. PARTICIPANTS: 87 151 Thai adults participated in TCS cohort. METHOD: Cox regression models measured longitudinal associations between union status and 11-year mortality. RESULTS: From 2005 (baseline) to 2016, persons who cohabited and lived with a partner, married persons but not living with a partner and separated/divorced/widowed people were more likely to die compared with those married and living together with a partner. Those who did not have good family support had a higher death risk than those having good family support.Single or cohabiting women had higher risks of mortality than women who were married and living together with a partner throughout follow-up, while separated/divorced/widowed men had higher risks of mortality than counterpart males. CONCLUSIONS: Our study reveals the protective effect of marriage and living together on mortality in Thailand, an understudied setting where institutionalisation of cohabitation is low leading to a limited mortality protection. Public policies for moderating mortality should thus be gender nuanced, culturally and institutionally specific. Also, we demonstrate that in settings such as Thailand, where marital status is not always defined in the same way as in western cultures, the need to measure cohabitation in locally relevant terms is important.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 7 citations exist upstream.

References

2010Social Relationships and Mortality Risk: A Meta-analytic Review 2002The Influence Of Income On Health: Views Of An Epidemiologist 2015Marriage and Family in East Asia: Continuity and Change 2000Similarity of the Relations between Marital Status and Subjective Well-Being Across Cultures 2006Marital status and mortality in the elderly: A systematic review and meta-analysis 1995'Til Death Do Us Part: Marital Disruption and Mortality 1995Reconceptualizing Marital Status as a Continuum of Social Attachment 2012Marital status, health and mortality

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.