Demography and Aging: Long Term Effects of Divorce, Early Widowhood, And Migration on Resources and Integration in Old Age

Abstract

Do characteristics of the marital and migration history of the elderly population of West-Berlin matter for their present resources and societal integration? To answer this question we analyse data from the Berlin Aging Study. We show that for resources in old age, it is important when and under what circumstances women lost their partner. Divorced women and WWll widows are financially worse off than never married women, still married women, and more recent widows, and they also evaluate their health more negatively than others. The migration history seems equally important. Financial resources, social resources, and societal integration in old age depend on characteristics like region of birth and having experienced flight or expulsion. But contrary to the effects of divorce and early widowhood for women, here we could not generally speak of one group of loosers