Marital History and Risk of Nursing Home Admission

Mieke B. Thomeer, University of Texas at Austin

Past decades witnessed multiple demographic shifts, such as population aging, which have important consequences for the strain on long-term care services. Past research shows that family structure, specifically current marital status and past marital history, is an important predictor of nursing home admission. Yet, as American families become smaller and more fluid, more adults are entering old age with fewer intact family relations that are willing to provide support in late life. This study examines risk of nursing home admission through using discrete hazard model with time dependence to analyze six waves of the Health and Retirement Survey (n=10,464). This study extends past research by exploring what occurs to older adults who possess these complex family structure histories and examining whether the passage of time makes these ties even less protective against risk of nursing home admission.