Household Income and Trajectories of Marital Satisfaction in Early Marriage

• Author: Thomas N. Bradbury,Grace L. Jackson,Jennifer L. Krull,Benjamin R. Karney
• Date: 01 June 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12394
• Published date: 01 June 2017

G L. J, J L. K, T N. B,  B R. K

University of California Los Angeles

Household Income and Trajectories of Marital

Satisfaction in Early Marriage

Are the marriages of lower income couples less

satisfying than the marriages of more afuent

couples? To address this question, we compared

trajectories of marital satisfaction among cou-

ples with a wide range of household incomes.

The marital satisfaction of 862 Black, White, and

Latino newlywed spouses (N=431 couples) was

assessed ve times, each 9 months apart, dur-

ing the rst 4 years of marriage. Lower income

couples did not have less satisfying marriages

on average, nor did their satisfaction decline

more steeply on average. They did, however,

experience (a) signicantly greater uctuations

in marital satisfaction across assessments and

(b) signicantly more variability between hus-

bands and wives. If efforts to support the mar-

riages of low-income couples are to address the

unique characteristics of their marital develop-

ment, these ndings suggest that efforts to stabi-

lize their marriages may be more effective than

efforts to improve their satisfaction alone.

Although marital disruption touches all

segments of society, its effects are dispro-

portionately experienced by the economically

disadvantaged (Bramlett & Mosher, 2002; Fein,

2004). For spouses in lower income marriages,

marital disruptions have been identied as a

Department of Psychology, Universityof California, 1285

Franz Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095 (gracelouisejackson@

gmail.com).

KeyWords: family policy, longitudinal, low-income families,

marital satisfaction, welfare reform.

leading predictor of entry into poverty, espe-

cially for women (e.g., Haskins & Sawhill,

2003). For the children in these marriages, early

exposure to marital disruption predicts later

negative mental health symptoms and worse

educational outcomes during adolescence (e.g.,

Spence, Najman, Bor, O’Callaghan, & Williams,

2002), which is especially noteworthy because

lower income marriages are likely to involve

young children (Elwood & Jencks, 2004).

Observing the disproportionate risk for dis-

solution among lower income marriages, many

have assumed that marriages within lower

income populations are experienced as less

satisfying as well. Indeed, this has been one of

the guiding assumptions of federal programs

(e.g., the Healthy Marriage Initiative) aimed at

strengthening marriages in low-income com-

munities (Administration for Children and

Families, 2012). Yet, to date, the empirical

support for this assumption has been weak and

inconsistent, primarily because of limitations in

the samples addressed and the analytic methods

employed. The primary goals of the current

study were to overcome the limitations of prior

research and evaluate the association between

household income and marital satisfaction

through longitudinal data from a diverse sample

of newlywed couples.

M S  I

One framework for expecting lower income

marriages to be less satisfying is the

Vulnerability–Stress–Adaptation (VSA) model

690 Journal of Marriage and Family 79 (June 2017): 690–704

DOI:10.1111/jomf.12394