Socio-Economic Status Triggers Mortality Differences by Marital Status and Living Arrangement

Sven Drefahl, Stockholm University

Recent studies argue that marital status does not reflect today’s social reality because more and more individuals are classified as never-married, widowed, or divorced although they are living together with a partner. Denmark is one of the forerunners of these developments and one of only very few countries where administrative sources provide information on cohabitation and other non-traditional living arrangements on the individual level and for the whole population. Here I apply a longitudinal approach using Danish Register data to investigate the relation between socio-economic variables and the type of living arrangement. I conducted hazard regression models for men and women separately. Adjusting for socio-economic variables we found that excess mortality of non-married reduced considerably. We also found that married do not always have the lowest mortality of all living arrangements. Among men and women cohabiters of above-average socio-economic status experience a significant lower risk of dying.