Partnership Trajectories and Later-Life Health: The Role of Social and Genetic Factors

Long-term partnership trajectories are important for understanding health inequalities in later life, yet few studies have examined how social and genetic factors jointly shape these patterns and their consequences. Using nationally representative data from the Health and Retirement Study, we applied sequence and cluster analysis to reconstruct partnership trajectories from ages 15 to 50 among 4,899 non-Hispanic White respondents, identifying six distinct clusters. We then estimated how early-life socioeconomic status and polygenic scores (PGSs) for educational attainment, well-being, depressive symptoms, and body mass index were associated with trajectory membership and whether these trajectories predicted self-rated health and depressive symptoms in later life. Respondent education and the educational attainment PGS showed the most consistent associations with trajectory patterns. Stable, continuous unions were linked to better health outcomes, while never-married men reported more depressive symptoms and divorced women reported poorer self-rated health than their continuously married peers. Higher well-being PGSs and lower depressive symptom and BMI PGSs were also linked to better outcomes. These findings suggest that social and genetic selection partly but not fully account for the health advantages of stable unions. Integrating life course and genomic approaches offers new insight into the origins of health disparities in aging.