Honors Projects

Katie FinchFollow

Abstract

Much research has been conducted on how married older adults fare in comparison to unmarried older adults. Since the amount of unmarried older adults is increasing, I found it important to see how these unmarried groups (early divorcees, gray divorcees, never-marrieds, and widoweds) stacked up against each other in terms of economic well-being. Using the 2012 Health and Retirement Study, I looked at how demographic factors and economic well-being indicators were correlated to another. The demographic factors examined included gender, marital status, race, and educational attainment. Income, poverty level, and assets were used to assess economic well-being. Similar to previous research findings, widoweds were the best off financially while never-marrieds were the worst. Widowed men had the highest income and early divorced men had the highest amount of assets. Early divorced women had the highest income while widowed women had the highest assets.

Department

Sociology

Major

Sociology

First Advisor

Dr. Susan Brown

First Advisor Department

Sociology

Second Advisor

Dr. Wendy Watson

Second Advisor Department

Gerontology

Third Advisor

Anna Hammersmith

Third Advisor Department

Sociology

Fourth Advisor

Matthew Wright

Fourth Advisor Department

Sociology

Publication Date

Spring 4-28-2016

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