TY  - JOUR
AU  - Banks, James
AU  - Kelly, Elaine
AU  - Smith, James P
TI  - Spousal Health Effects - the Role of Selection
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 19438
PY  - 2013
Y2  - September 2013
DO  - 10.3386/w19438
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w19438
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w19438.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
James Banks
Arthur Lewis Building-3.020
School of Social Sciences
The University of Manchester
Manchester M13 9PL
United Kingdom
E-Mail: j.banks@ifs.org.uk

Elaine J. Kelly
Institute for Fiscal Studies
7 Ridgmount Street 
London 
WC1E 7AE
United Kingdom
E-Mail: elaine_k@ifs.org.uk

James P. Smith
RAND Corporation
1776 Main Street
P.O. Box 2138
Santa Monica, CA 90407-2138
Tel: 310-451-6925
E-Mail: jsmith_1776@outlook.com
M1  - published as James Banks, Elaine Kelly, James P. Smith. "Spousal Health Effects: The Role of Selection," in David A. Wise, editor, "Discoveries in the Economics of Aging" University of Chicago Press (2014)

M3  - presented at "Conference on the Economics of Aging", May 9-11, 2013
AB  - In this paper, we investigate the issue of partner selection in the health of individuals who are at least fifty years old in England and the United States. We find a strong and positive association in family background variables including education of partners and their parents. Adult health behaviors such as smoking, drinking, and exercise are more positively associated in England compared to the United States.  Childhood health indicators are also positively associated across partners.  

We also investigated pre and post partnership smoking behavior of couples. There exists strong positive assortative mating in smoking in that smokers are much more likely to partner with smokers and non-smokers with non-smokers.  This relationship is far stronger in England compared to the United States. In the United States, we find evidence of asymmetric partner influence in smoking in that men's pre marriage smoking behavior influences his female partner's post marriage smoking behavior but there does not appear to be a parallel influence of women's pre-marriage smoking on their male partner's post-marital smoking.  These relationships are much more parallel across genders in England.
ER  -