Divorce at a younger age is harder to cope with

A recent study from Michigan State University has found that divorce at a younger age hurts people’s health more than divorce later in life.

Sociologist Hui Liu said the findings, which appear in the research journal Social Science & Medicine, suggest older people have more coping skills to deal with the stress of divorce.

Liu analysed the self-reported health of 1,282 participants in Americans’ Changing Lives, a long-term national survey. She measured the gap in health status between those who remained married during the 15-year study period and those who transitioned from marriage to divorce, at certain ages and among different birth cohorts, or generations.

Liu found the gap was wider at younger ages. For example, among people born in the 1950s, those who got divorced between the ages of 35 and 41 reported more health problems in relation to their continuously married counterparts than those who got divorced in the 44 to 50 age range.

From a generational perspective, the negative health impact was stronger for baby boomers than it was for older generations – a finding that surprised Liu.

“I would have expected divorce to carry less stress for the younger generation, since divorce is more prevalent for them,” she said.

According to Liu, this may be because the pressure to marry and stay married was stronger for older generations, and so those who did divorce may have been among the most unhappily married – and thus felt a certain degree of relief when they did divorce.