Work

Household Income and Trajectories of Marital Satisfaction in Early Marriage

Year: 2017

Type: article

Abstract: Are the marriages of lower-income couples less satisfying than the marriages of more affluent couples? To address this question, we compared trajectories of marital satisfaction among couples with a wide range of household incomes. The marital satisfaction of 862 Black, White, and Latino newlywed spouses (N=431 couples) was assessed five times, each nine months apart, over the first four years of marriage. Lower-income couples did not have less satisfying marriages on average, nor did their satisfaction decline more steeply on average. However, they did experience (1) significantly greater fluctuations in marital satisfaction across assessments, and (2) significantly more variability between husbands and wives. If efforts to support the marriages of low-income couples are to address the unique characteristics of their marital development, these findings suggest that efforts to stabilize their marriages may be more effective than efforts to improve their satisfaction alone.

Source: Journal of Marriage and the Family

DOI: 10.1111/jomf.12394

Authors: Grace L. Jackson, Jennifer L. Krull, Thomas N. Bradbury, Benjamin R. Karney

Institution: University of California, Los Angeles

Language: English

Topic: Attachment and Relationship Dynamics

Subfield: Social Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: Reduced inequalities, No poverty

Open Access status: green

Funder: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development