The Incidence of Poverty among the Recently Widowed: Mediating Factors in the Life Course

Taking a life-course perspective in the analysis of data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, this study examines severalfactors that mediate the economic consequences of widowhood. Emphasis is given in the analysis to the possible mediating influences of six life-course variables: income in the yearprior to the widowhood event, the calendaryear of widowhood, age at widowhood, sex, years of marriage, and past work experience. Logistic regressions are estimated to assess the short-run effects of these variables, while proportional-hazard rate models are used to assess their long-run effects. The empirical work indicates that the influence of these mediating factors varies markedly by (a) the length of the postwidowhood follow-up, and (b) how poverty is operationalized. One consistent finding is that survivors with many years of work experience have lower incidence rates of poverty than those who have little or no prior labor-market experience.