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The authors examined associations between marital quality and both general life satisfaction and experienced (momentary) well-being among older husbands and wives, the relative importance of own versus spouse's marital appraisals for well-being, and the extent to which the association between own marital appraisals and well-being is moderated by spouse's appraisals. Data are from the 2009 Disability and Use of Time daily diary supplement to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (N = 722). One 's own marital satisfaction is a sizable and significant correlate of life satisfaction and momentary happiness; associations do not differ significantly by gender. The authors did not find a significant association between spouse 's marital appraisals and own well-being. However, the association between husband's marital quality and life satisfaction is buoyed when his wife also reports a happy marriage, yet flattened when his wife reports low marital quality. Implications for understanding marital dynamics and well-being in later life are discussed.
Key Words: actor-partner independence models, daily diary methods, experienced well-being, gender differences, happi- ness, life satisfaction, marital quality, older adults.
The protective effects of marriage for physical and emotional well-being are widely docu- mented (Carr & Springer, 2010). However, recent research shows that these effects are conditional upon the quality of the marriage; problematic marriages take an emotional toll, whereas high-quality marriages provide bene- fits, especially for women (Proulx, Helms, & Buehler, 2007) and older adults (Umberson, Williams, Powers, Liu, & Needham, 2006). Although the positive association between mar- ital quality and well-being is well established, several important issues remain unexplored. First, most such studies have focused on neg- ative aspects of psychological functioning, especially depressive symptoms (Bookwala, 2012). Studies that have focused on pos- itive aspects of well-being typically have used decontextualized and general fife sat- isfaction measures (Whisman, Uebelacker, Tolejko, Chatav, & Meckelvie, 2006) rather than momentary measures of positive mood that may be less susceptible to response bias.
Second, most studies have focused on only one spouse's marital appraisals and have not considered that both own and spouse's appraisals may contribute independently to well-being (i.e., actor vs. partner effects; Cook & Kenney, 2005). Although mounting research suggests that one spouse's marital (dis)satisfaction may affect the other partner's well-being, such studies typically have focused on young or midlife...