Marital Quality During the COVID-19 Pandemic Among Older Couples: Does Spousal Education Matter?

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed significant challenges to intimate relationships, and the way couples adapt to these challenges varies, likely depending on educational attainment, further shaping their relationship quality. This study explores how both an individual’s own and their spouse’s educational attainment influence their perception of marital quality during the pandemic. Using data from the 2016 and 2020 Health and Retirement Study (HRS, 1,036 couples aged 50 years or older), we applied the Actor-Partner Interdependence Mediation Model (APIMeM) integrated with the lagged dependent variable approach to assess how both an individual’s own and their spouse’s education influenced each other’s perception of marital quality during the pandemic through household economic condition and sense of control. We found that higher spousal education was associated with higher positive and lower negative marital quality for both partners. In addition, husbands’ education had a stronger association with wives’ marital quality than wives’ education did with husbands’ marital quality. Mediation analysis revealed that household economic condition and individuals’ sense of control partly explained the relationship between spousal education and one’s perception of marital quality. Our findings highlight the importance of spousal education, particularly husbands’ education, in influencing marital quality among older couples during an unprecedented crisis.