Marital status, health, and retirement wealth for middle aged and older women

We investigate the different impacts of health problems on wealth among unmarried and married women in their later years. We advance the literature by using a new health measure of a 22 year sequence of chronic diseases. Using data from 2,476 women age 50 or older from the 1992–2014 Health and Retirement Study, we find that unmarried women have more complicated and costly health sequences compared with married women, including multi-morbidity or co-morbidity. Over the 22 year period, retirement wealth for unmarried women with costly health sequences is reduced by approximately $3,600 to $5,400 annually.