Objective: This study investigated the association between individuals' economic situation and divorce among the population aged 60+ in Sweden, with a focus on the role of gender and potential changes across cohorts.

Background: Previous research on divorce has mainly considered individuals of working age or all ages combined, although late-life divorce is increasing in several Western countries. Economic considerations regarding divorce may differ for older members of the population, who often have a more restricted economic situation and fewer possibilities to respond to the consequences of a dissolution.

Method: Using Swedish population registers, this study investigated late-life divorce among cohorts born 1930–1956. Discrete-time event-history analysis was employed to study the relationship between income (recent and accumulated individual income, and spouses combined income levels) and divorce across gender and cohorts.

Results: For women, the results showed a shifting pattern from a positive to a slightly negative gradient of the two individual income measures for divorce. Men had an increasingly negative income gradient in divorce across cohorts. The results for combined income levels for couples corroborate these patterns. Late-life divorce has become increasingly linked to low income over cohorts.

Conclusion: The novel findings for older individuals mirror previous findings on trends in the general population, although those studies used other socioeconomic measures. As the association between income and divorce becomes increasingly negative among older women and men, and as the divorce rate increases, there is a growing need to understand different aspects of couple dynamics in later life.

As societies age and late-life divorce becomes more common, older adult divorcees will constitute an increasingly important demographic group. Yet, divorce for older adults differs from mid-life divorce. In this paper, we look at housing tenure transitions around the time of divorce and examine the extent to which housing patterns observed for late-life divorce resemble those among mid-life divorcees. We use Swedish register data to analyze housing shifts during divorce for older adults aged 60–78. Using data on the discontinuation of marriages or civil partnerships between 1995 and 2013, we identify 30,000 late-life divorces. We analyze gender differences in the probability of residential mobility and the likelihood of ownership and rental tenure. We find that women are more likely to move. Our study also highlights gender differences in the effects of late-life divorce on homeownership, showing that women are more likely to be tenant owners, while men are more likely to be owners of single-family housing units.

Couple relationships and money practices are intimately connected. Money can often cause disagreement and conflict within couples and represents symbolic values and expectations between partners. This study adopts a practices approach to exploring money practices among Swedish couples in the third age (60–80 years old) through 17 semi-structured interviews. We focus particularly on how money practices constitute and are constituted by dimensions of ‘being and doing couple’. We find that money practices both reflect and constitute couplehood. Our analysis has revealed that money practices are interlinked with couplehood through the primary themes of togetherness, fairness and trust, independence and finally, a reluctance to imagine oneself outside of couplehood, for other reasons than widowhood.

Objective: This study explores whether relationship satisfaction among older individuals living with a partner is influenced by partners' status of working or being retired, and whether the degree of pooling money affects the association.

Background: Couple's spending decisions are likely influenced by the partner with the greatest bargaining power, which may lead to different levels of relationship satisfaction. However, any role of partners' statuses on relationship satisfaction may change when adjusting for how partners organize resources.

Method: The subsample consists of older respondents in the Swedish Gender and Generations Survey 2012–2013 (n = 1,737). The analytical approach is logistic regression where the outcome is whether the respondents are completely or not completely satisfied with their relationship.

Results: Working respondents with a working partner were less satisfied with their relationship compared to retired respondents with a retired partner. In models considering the gender of whom is retired or working, respondents in couples with a working woman and a retired man were also less satisfied than retired respondents with a retired partner. However, this association disappears when adjusting for degree of pooling.

Conclusion: In couples where the woman retires earlier than the man, it can have a negative impact on relationship satisfaction when the partners do not pool money. For couples with the same status, pooling seems to matter less.

Implications: Financial educators, practitioners, and policymakers may acknowledge that retirement and working status of older partners play a role for relationship satisfaction, and how partners organize resources may be one area that provides a potential explanation for such problems.

Sweden and West Germany have had persistently high divorce rates in recent decades, but these two welfare states were differently equipped to mitigate the economic consequences of divorce for individual security in old age: Sweden followed a gender-equal policy approach to enable women and men to achieve economic autonomy, while West Germany, following the male-breadwinner model, introduced the system of 'divorce-splitting' to account for differences in women's and men's income. Against this background, this study uses large-scale register data from the German Public Pension Fund and the Swedish population registers to examine how divorce is related to the monthly public old-age pension income of women and men. The main comparison groups are divorced and (re)married individuals who entered retirement between 2013 and 2018. We descriptively show annual income histories from ages 20 to 65, and calculate monthly public old-age pension income with respect to lifetime income and pension regulations, such as the supplements/deductions for 'divorce-splitting'. Multiple ordinary least square regression models further examine how family status relates to monthly public old-age pension income by gender. The results reveal that women and men in Sweden experience similar working histories, although women's incomes are lower. This is also reflected in women still having lower pension incomes than men. However, divorced and married women show comparable pension incomes, while divorced men receive approximately 26 per cent less pension income than married men. In West Germany, divorced women have significantly higher pension incomes than married women. The system of 'divorce-splitting' increases women's and decreases men's pension incomes, which seems to equalise their pension incomes. However, both stay below a married man's pension income. The findings indicate economic inequality in public old-age pension income by family status in Sweden and West Germany. 

Approximately one-third of all older adults in Sweden report periods with depressive symptoms. The study aims to find explanations for older partnered individuals’ depressive symptoms by focusing on their gender attitudes, household division of labor and conformity to younger partnered individuals’ commonly held gender attitudes and household division of labor. Analyses are based on a subsample (n respondents 1764) from the Swedish Generations and Gender Survey (2012/2013) including individuals aged 60–80. The analytical strategy is logistic regression. The findings show that individuals with traditional gender attitudes are more likely to report a high level of depressive symptoms than individuals with transitional (i.e. attitudes in between traditional and egalitarian attitudes) and individuals with egalitarian gender attitudes. Lower conformity to commonly held gender attitudes is also associated with a high level of depressive symptoms. However, neither the household division of labor nor conformity to common household division was associated with depressive symptoms. In later life, gender attitudes thus seem more important for depressive symptoms than the actual household division of labor. It may be that attitudes are more important than behavior among older couples, and a reason for this may be that behavior is likely more restricted by practical circumstances.

This study investigates how partners' money management strategies are associated with the experience of financial disagreements among older couples (60-80 years old). Money management is a broad concept, and this study operationalizes whether the partners pool all money, the partners pool some money, one partner manages the money (and gives a share to the other partner for personal spending), or the partners keep all money separate. The data comprise a subsample from the Swedish Generations and Gender Survey from 2012 to 2013. The descriptive statistics show that 11% of older couples experience financial disagreements and that there is a large variation in how couples manage their money. Contrary to our expectations, logistic regression analyses further indicate that couples who pool all money are less likely to have financial disagreements than couples who either keep all money separate or adopt a lower degree of pooling. Whether some or all money is kept separate does not seem to be important for the likelihood of financial disagreements, as all these couples are more likely to experience disagreements. Among couples with financial hardship, partial pooling and keeping money separate are associated with a higher likelihood of financial disagreements than pooling all money. In conclusion, the greater probability of financial disagreements among couples who do not pool their earnings calls for greater awareness of the potential consequences of various money management contexts among individuals, couples, decision-makers and practitioners. In the worst cases, couples may have poor financial wellbeing.

Economic conflicts are likely to affect couples' relationship, and different strategies of handling money may be important for how common such conflicts are. This study investigates whether couples' choice of pooling money is associated with the occurrence of economic conflicts and whether different degree of pooling matters differently in different situations in life. The study focuses on whether the respondents experience economic hardship, their age (or cohort), and duration of union. We use the GGS 2012/2013 for Sweden including cohabiting and married respondents aged 20-80. Results from regression models suggest that couples who pool all money have lowest propensity for economic conflicts. Furthermore, to have difficulties making ends meet is associated with economic conflicts, older couples (or of earlier cohorts) are less likely to experience economic conflicts and likewise relationships of long duration less often experience economic conflict. It seems that pooling money is associated with less economic conflicts especially among the couples with economic hardships, among older couples, and couples of longer duration. Thus, pooling of money has a moderating importance for some situations.

This study examines adult children's propensity to provide personal care to older mothers and fathers. The theory of intergenerational solidarity facilitates the understanding of commitment and support between adult children and parents. Solidarity may depend on childhood events as well as the current situation, and we therefore focus on whether there was a parental breakup in childhood and the parent's current living arrangements. We also focus on the gendered aspects of the relations as earlier research has found stronger matrilinear relationships. The propensity for personal care was analyzed with regression analysis using the 2012 Swedish Generations and Gender Survey. The results show that daughters are more likely than sons to provide personal care to both parents. Parental breakup in childhood does not change the propensity of personal care to any parent. The probability of receiving care is higher for lone mothers than for mothers living with the father, but not for repartnered mothers. Adult children's care provision does not differ for lone fathers and fathers living with the mother, but children are more likely to provide care to lone fathers than to repartnered fathers. We interpret this to indicate that repartnering weakens ties to fathers but not mothers. The results indicate that the child's gender and the parent's living arrangements operate differently with regard to care for mothers and fathers. The most common pattern is care provided from daughters to mothers. For example, daughters of lone mothers are more likely to provide care than sons in the same situation. We conclude that intergenerational solidarity is not affected by parental breakup in childhood but that present living arrangements affect such solidarity in gendered ways.

Marriage is an institution that has become optional for many. This study investigates how decisions are taken regarding marriage among Swedish cohabiting couples in the twenty-first century, specifically focusing on whose intentions to marry are most decisive. We use the Young Adult Panel Study conducted in 2009 with augmented register data for 2009–2014 in order to observe both partners’ intentions and to then follow up on which couples ultimately married. The study finds that women’s and men’s intentions to marry seem to be equally important, but that there are gendered differences by educational level: women’s intentions carry more weight among highly educated couples, while men’s intentions carry more weight among lower educated couples.