Socioeconomic Status and Mortality: A Couple Model Approach

Daphne Kuo, University of Wisconsin-Madison

In the current study, we are using a sample of married couples to examine the relationships between socioeconomic status and mortality. By using married couples, we control for unmeasured heterogeneity in the family to eliminate possible selection effects from the estimated relationships between mortality and socioeconomic status. Our sample of married couples are a group of high school graduates and their spouses from Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. The variables, including individual prior health status, educational attainment, employment status, incomes and assets, were collected in 2004 and 1993 surveys; and the death status was from NDI up to 2010. We employ survival model used in Mare and Palloni (1988). We expect that net of unmeasured heterogeneity and prior health status, one’s socioeconomic status will predict mortality after age 55. In the paper, we will discuss the implications of our findings, limitations of our analysis and data, and possible future research.