The Golden Years are Golden Years of Marriage?: Congruency of Couples’ Marital Quality after Retirement

Kathryn Coursolle, University of California, Los Angeles

This study will use data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) and multinomial logistic regression techniques to assess the effects of retirement on perceptions of marital quality between husbands and wives. As marital quality is multidimensional, I will estimate both closeness to one’s spouse and shared outlook in life to one’s spouse. The first aim of this project will be to assess the consequences of retirement for the level of congruency in marital quality reports between respondents and their spouses. Congruency here refers to how similar the reports of marital quality are between the respondent and his or her spouse. A secondary aim of this project is to examine methodological issues in using respondent’s reports of marital quality versus both the respondent and his or her spouse’s reports of marital quality and whether this varies by gender.