Ailing Wives Face Higher Divorce Risk

When a wife is facing drastically declining health, the marriage is more likely to end in divorce, compared to marriages where the husband is sick, new research suggests.

Researchers Amelia Karraker from the University of Michigan and Kenzie Latham from the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis presented their findings Thursday, at the Population Association of America's Annual meeting in Boston, Massachusetts.

The pair tracked 2,717 marriages between 1992 and 2010 from the Health and Retirement Study -- an ongoing population-based observational study. According to the researchers, they focused on heterosexual marriages in order to determine how severe illness affects the state of the marriage.

After accounting for extraneous factors, the researchers were able to determine that there was an increased chance of divorce when the wife came down with a life-threatening illness such as serious heart problems, stroke, lung disease, or even cancer. However, there appeared to be no noticeable rise in divorce risk when the husband fell ill.

Following their analysis, the researchers were able to determine that, on average, 15 percent of the marriages where the wife fell ill ended in divorce. Women who experienced heart problems or lung disease faced even higher divorce rates.

While the researchers only found an association between ailing wives and increased divorce rates, Karraker theorizes that a potential cause for this trend may be societal gender roles.

"Gender norms and social expectations about caregiving may make it more difficult for men to provide care to ill spouses," Karraker said a University of Michigan new release. "And because of the imbalance in marriage markets, especially in older ages, divorced men have more choices among prospective partners than divorced women."

These findings were presented at the Population Association of America's Annual meeting.  As the study has yet to be published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, it is recommended that they viewed as preliminary findings until the time of official publication.