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Widowhood and Mortality: A Meta-Analysis
While the \"widowhood effect\" is well known, there is substantial heterogeneity in the magnitude of effects reported in different studies. We conducted a meta-analysis of widowhood and mortality, focusing on longitudinal studies with follow-up from the time of bereavement.
A random-effects meta-analysis was conducted to calculate the overall relative risk (RR) for subsequent mortality among 2,263,888 subjects from 15 prospective cohort studies. We found a statistically significant positive association between widowhood and mortality, but the widowhood effect was stronger in the period earlier than six months since bereavement (overall RR = 1.41, 95% CI: 1.26, 1.57) compared to the effect after six months (overall RR = 1.14, 95% CI: 1.10, 1.18). Meta-regression showed that the widowhood effect was not different for those aged younger than 65 years compared to those older than 65 (P = 0.25). There was, however, a difference in the magnitude of the widowhood effect by gender; for women the RR was not statistically significantly different from the null (overall RR = 1.04, 95% CI: 1.00, 1.08), while it was for men (overall RR = 1.23, 95% CI: 1.18, 1.28).
The results suggest that further studies should focus more on the mechanisms that generate this association especially among men.
Journal Article
Young widower : a memoir
\"John W. Evans was twenty-nine years old and his wife, Katie, was thirty. They had met in the Peace Corps in Bangladesh, taught in Chicago, studied in Miami, and were working for a year in Romania, when they set off with friends to hike into the Carpathian Mountains. In an instant, their life together was shattered. Katie became separated from the group. When Evans finally found her, he could only watch helplessly as she was mauled to death by a brown bear. In such a love story, such a life story, how could a person ever move forward? That is the question Evans, traumatized and restless, confronts in this book as he learns the language of grief, the rhetoric of survival, and the contrary poetic algorithms of holding fast and letting go. His memories of Katie and their time together, and the strangeness of his life with her family in the year after her death, create an unsentimental but deeply moving picture of loss, the brutality of nature, and the unfairness of needing to narrate a story that nothing can prepare a person to tell.Told with unyielding witness, elegance, and care, Young Widower is a heartbreaking account of a senseless tragedy and the persistence of grief in a young person's life\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
The Effect of Widowhood on Mortality by the Causes of Death of Both Spouses
Objectives. We investigated the effect of spousal bereavement on mortality to document cause-specific bereavement effects by the causes of death of both the predecedent spouse and the bereaved partner. Methods. We obtained data from a nationally representative cohort of 373 189 elderly married couples in the United States who were followed from 1993 to 2002. We used competing risk and Cox models in our analyses. Results. For both men and women, the death of a predecedent spouse from almost all causes, including various cancers, infections, and cardiovascular diseases, increased the all-cause mortality of the bereaved partner to varying degrees. Moreover, the death of a predecedent spouse from any cause increased the survivor's cause-specific mortality for almost all causes, including cancers, infections, and cardiovascular diseases, to varying degrees. Conclusions. The effect of widowhood on mortality varies substantially by the causes of death of both spouses, suggesting that the widowhood effect is not restricted to one aspect of human biology. Future research should examine the specific mechanisms of the widowhood effect and identify opportunities for health interventions.
Journal Article
Marital status, widowhood duration, gender and health outcomes: a cross-sectional study among older adults in India
Background
Previous research has demonstrated health benefits of marriage and the potential for worse outcomes during widowhood in some populations. However, few studies have assessed the relevance of widowhood and widowhood duration to a variety of health-related outcomes and chronic diseases among older adults in India, and even fewer have examined these relationships stratified by gender.
Methods
Using a cross-sectional representative sample of 9,615 adults aged 60 years or older from 7 states in diverse regions of India, we examine the relationship between widowhood and self-rated health, psychological distress, cognitive ability, and four chronic diseases before and after adjusting for demographic characteristics, socioeconomic status, living with children, and rural–urban location for men and women, separately. We then assess these associations when widowhood accounts for duration.
Results
Being widowed as opposed to married was associated with worse health outcomes for women after adjusting for other explanatory factors. Widowhood in general was not associated with any outcomes for men except for cognitive ability, though men who were widowed within 0–4 years were at greater risk for diabetes compared to married men. Moreover, recently widowed women and women who were widowed long-term were more likely to experience psychological distress, worse self-rated health, and hypertension, even after adjusting for other explanatory variables, whereas women widowed 5–9 years were not, compared to married women.
Conclusions
Gender, the duration of widowhood, and type of outcome are each relevant pieces of information when assessing the potential for widowhood to negatively impact health. Future research should explore how the mechanisms linking widowhood to health vary over the course of widowhood. Incorporating information about marital relationships into the design of intervention programs may help better target potential beneficiaries among older adults in India.
Journal Article
Quality of life and widowhood: a cross-sectional study of social security scheme beneficiaries
Introduction
After losing a spouse, a woman experiences diverse changes in her life, and varying cultural settings add to them. Research has shown the impact of widowhood on one’s quality of life. This study evaluated the quality of life and its predictors of widows of Jodhpur enrolled in Ekal Nari Samman Pension Yojna, a state-sponsored pension scheme for widowed, divorced, or abandoned women from an economically weaker section of Rajasthan.
Methodology
A cross-sectional study was conducted among 260 widows aged 18–45 from Jodhpur City. A semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect data after obtaining informed written consent. The CDC HRQOL-14 questionnaire was used to collect data on quality of life. Data was analysed using descriptive statistics and logistic regression analysis.
Results
The study findings revealed that the number of children, chronic illness, depression, and anxiety were consistently significant predictors of quality of life among widows in Jodhpur.
Conclusion
The findings highlight the association of physical and psychological health with the quality of life of widows. There is a critical need to integrate mental health services and chronic illness management into widows’ welfare programs to ensure comprehensive support.
Journal Article
Risk factors and prognostic impact of unwanted loneliness in heart failure
Heart failure (HF) is associated with a high prevalence of unwanted loneliness. This study aimed to assess whether unwanted loneliness was associated with adverse clinical endpoints in HF patients. Additionally, we also aimed to examine the risk factors associated with unwanted loneliness in HF. We included 298 patients diagnosed with stable HF. Clinical, biochemical, echocardiographic parameters and loneliness using ESTE II scale were assessed. We analyzed the association between the exposure and adverse clinical endpoints by Cox (death or any hospitalization), and negative binomial regressions (recurrent hospitalizations or visits to the emergency room). Risk factors associated with loneliness were analyzed using logistic regression. The mean age was 75.8 ± 9.4 years, with 111 (37.2%) being women, 53 (17.8%) widowed, and 154 (51.7%) patients having preserved ejection fraction. The median (p25–p75%) ESTE II score was 9.0 (6.0–12.0), and 36.9% fulfilled the loneliness criteria (> 10). Both women (OR = 2.09; 95% CI 1.11–3.98, p = 0.023) and widowhood (OR = 3.25; 95% CI 1.51–7.01, p = 0.003) were associated with a higher risk of loneliness. During a median follow-up of follow-up of 362 days (323–384), 93 patients (31.3%) presented the combined episode of death or all-cause admissions. Loneliness was significantly related to the risk of time to the composite of death or any readmission during the composite (HR = 1.83; 95% CI 1.18–2.84, p = 0.007). Women and widowhood emerge as risk factors for unwanted loneliness in HF patients. Unwanted loneliness is associated with higher morbidity during follow-up.
Journal Article
Widows and the termination of the gender contract
Widowhood is often described through stereotypes and images of passive, weak, lonely and dependent women. This study presents additional aspects of widows who have chosen to continue their lives without a new spouse. It thus joins the recently growing body of knowledge which presents widowhood in a less one-dimensional way while referring to the complexity and different layers of widows' lives. A qualitative study was conducted with 30 women aged 63–87 who had been widows for 1–34 years. The findings showed that the dominant experience shared by all women is one of liberation and freedom – a feeling of independence that is expressed socially, personally and economically. Thus, alongside feelings of loneliness and adaptation difficulties, they also experience strength and empowerment. The term ‘gender contract’ serves as a theoretical explanation of the independence narrative that characterises the widows; the termination of the couple's gender contract allows them to redefine their priorities, identify themselves as active instead of passive figures and create for themselves a place of their own. By bringing widowhood to the centre of the discussion, the study gives legitimacy to a discourse on feelings less spoken about, such as relief, freedom and independence. In this way, the study contributes to the ongoing debate on widows by shattering the accepted myth of widows as vulnerable, weak and dependent but without underestimating the difficulties or ignoring the women's diversity.
Journal Article
Exploring widowhood experiences through selected Zimbabwean Shona songs
This article explores the post-death socio-cultural and economic vicissitudes that are encountered by widows in the context of losing the husband as a male counterpart. Focus is on the reflections from male-sung selected Shona songs as cultural texts, namely, Simon Chimbetu’s Shirikadzi (widow), Solo Makore’s Shirikadzi (widow), and Oliver Mutukudzi’s Neria. These song texts are utilized as the article’s primary sources and prism through which the typical lived and liveable realities of widowhood among the Shona people of Zimbabwe are interpreted. Obtaining in the lyrical renditions and maintained as the argument of the article is that losing the husband, in a nuclear Shona family setup, plunges the surviving female spouse into socio-economic turbulence and emotional turmoil. In this regard, responsible participation and complementarity among kin members become indispensable. With less effective social nets towards such vulnerable groups in contemporary society, the article further avers that this has far-reaching implications on the kinship system–precisely the elder son (mwanakomana) and/or the brother (hanzvadzi), among others. Thus, unlike previous widowhood studies, this article uniquely interrogates widowed women’s uncomfortable experiences as a society collective responsibility rather than an individual burden. The article uniquely engages music since it is deployed as a functional and valid tool for mass communication. The expressed poignant widowhood challenges are appreciated from the perspective of Africana womanism theory against the backdrop that the issues are conceptualised within the socio-cultural and economic frame of male-female relations.
Journal Article
How Financially Literate Are Women? An Overview and New Insights
We document strikingly similar gender differences in financial literacy across countries. When asked to answer questions that measure knowledge of basic financial concepts, women are less likely than men to answer correctly and more likely to indicate that they do not know the answer. Both young and old women show low levels of financial literacy. Moreover, women for whom financial knowledge is likely to be very important—for example widows or single women—also know little about concepts relevant for day-to-day financial decisions. The gender differences are present for very basic as well as more advanced measures of financial literacy. This is important because financial literacy has been linked to economic behavior, including retirement planning and wealth accumulation. Women live longer than men and are likely to spend time in widowhood. Thus, improving women's financial literacy is key to helping them prepare for retirement and promoting their financial security.
Journal Article