The Context of Psychological Well-Being after Retirement: Do His, Her, and Their Perceptions of Marital Quality Matter?

Kathryn Coursolle, University of California, Los Angeles

Marriage by definition includes two people, yet no research to date has carefully considered whether perceptions of both partners in a marital relationship contribute to an individual’s post-retirement psychological well-being. This project will investigate three research questions: whether the marital quality perceptions of the respondent’s spouse influences the respondent’s psychological well-being of the respondent, the degree to which marital quality matching of the reports of both the respondent and his or her spouse impact one’s emotional well-being after transitioning to retirement, and whether there are gender differences in the influence of marital quality matching on psychological well-being after retirement. Using WLS data from the 1992 and 2003 waves of respondent data, and the 2004 spousal interviews, along with OLS and logistic regression techniques, preliminary results suggest there is some evidence of an effect of perceptions of marital quality of the respondent’s spouse on the well-being of the respondent after retirement.