Spousal Well-Being among older Adults in India: A Dyadic Perspective

Manish Lekhwani, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)
Dipti Govil, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)

Individuals in close relationships, such as marriage, start sharing similar levels of overall well-being over time. Similarity in the wellbeing status between partners can be assessed through either the extent of concordance between spouses or effect of each other's characteristics. Research on spousal concordance is widely studied in the western countries, whereas in India, the domain is unexplored especially for life satisfaction and health. Therefore, this paper examines the extent of life satisfaction concordance between spouses using data from the Longitudinal Ageing Study in India (LASI), Wave-1 (2017-2018). The study generates a dataset of 22,451 couples and tries to find the factors that affect the life satisfaction in couples. Descriptive statistics and regression were performed to assess the association. The results show a significant positive correlation between the life satisfaction of spouses. Couples with higher spirituality exhibited higher life satisfaction, while depression and low self-reported health were associated with lower life satisfaction. Other factors like satisfaction with living arrangement, better education, no morbidity showed a positive association with high life satisfaction. The study underscores how spousal concordance is essential for having better well-being in Indian couples and highlights the relevance of considering shared health and emotional experiences in understanding successful ageing.

Keywords: Population Ageing, Health and Morbidity

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