Work-Related Health Limitations, Education, and the Risk of Marital Disruption

Despite progress in identifying the covariates of divorce, there remain substantial gaps in the knowledge. One of these gaps is the relationship between health and risk of marital dissolution. I extend prior research by examining the linkages between work-related health limitations and divorce using 25 years of data (N = 7919) taken from the 1979 National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY-79). I found that work-related health limitations among husbands, but not wives, were linked to an increased risk of divorce. In addition, I found that this relationship was moderated by education in a fashion that varies according to race. For White men, education exacerbated the effect of health limitations, but for Black men, education attenuated the effects of work-related health limitations.