Invited Commentary: Toward a More Comprehensive Social Epidemiology of Marital Trajectories and Mortality

In this issue of the Journal, Dupre et al. (Am J Epidemiol. 2009;170(5):546-555) use data from a nationally representative cohort of older US adults to examine the association of current marital status, timing of first marriage, number and kind of transitions out of marriage, and durations spent in various marital statuses with the risk of all-cause mortality. Their study offers a wealth of empirical findings that make important contributions to research on the relation between marital status and mortality. The richness of their findings suggests the need for future research to provide a more complete account of the mechanisms that lead from specific dimensions of marital status (and family structure more broadly) to mortality or other health outcomes over the life course.