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Multiple Roles and Physical Health among Older Adults

Gender and Ethnic Comparisons

Northwestern University

In this article, the role accumulation hypothesis is tested among older Black and White women and men from a national sample. Eight health variables are regressed on multiple roles (employee, spouse, parent, volunteer, homemaker, grandparent, care-giver, and student), gender, ethnicity, age, and education. Regressions are also tested separately by gender and ethnicity for those health variables on which group differences are significant. Multiple roles are significantly linearly associated with better health on all but one of the outcomes for the total sample. Significant interactions show that this association is stronger for men than for women and for Blacks than for Whites; the link between multiple roles and health is weakest for White women. Findings support the role accumulation hypothesis and illustrate the importance of expanding definitions of multiple roles in relation to health among older adults.

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