Diabetes Mellitus and Marital Status: Evidence from the National Longitudinal Mortality Study on the Effect of Marital Dissolution and the Death of a Spouse

PURPOSE: This study evaluates the full impact of marital status on diabetes mellitus by stratifying the analysis by gender, including socioeconomic covariates and, unlike most studies, extending marital status by separating out previously conflated status categories. METHODS: Release 5 of the National Longitudinal Mortality Study (NLMS) was used for the data. Logistic regression was applied to the data from 1990 to 2011. The effective sample size consists of 1,384,507 individuals age 18 and above recruited into the study (via the Current Population Surveys), 3,955 of whom had died of diabetes mellitus by 2011. RESULTS: For minority men and non-Hispanic white men, divorced/separated status was significantly related to diabetes mortality, respectively (OR=1.318, CI=1.010, 1.719; and OR=1.283, CI=1.054, 1.562). For minority women and non-Hispanic white women, widowed status was related to diabetes mortality, respectively (OR=1.349, CI=1.107, 1.643; and OR=1.262, CI=1.113, 1.431). CONCLUSION: Contrary to recent epidemiological studies in which divorced/separated and widowed status were combined into one covariate, this United States study finds that divorced/separated men and widowed women are at increased risk for diabetes mellitus mortality, and that among these populations at risk, minorities are at higher risk than whites. The study highlights the importance of marital status and gender differences in the risk of death from diabetes.