The Effect of Widowhood on Mental Health ‐ an Analysis of Anticipation Patterns Surrounding the Death of a Spouse
利用美国面板数据与死亡记录，发现配偶死亡前存在强烈的抑郁预期效应，且死亡后适应缓慢，主要归因于照护负担和死因，对制定老年社会政策有启示。
This study explores the effects of widowhood on mental health by taking into account the anticipation and adaptation to the partner's death. The empirical analysis uses representative panel data from the USA that are linked to administrative death records of the National Death Index. I estimate static and dynamic specifications of the panel probit model in which unobserved heterogeneity is modeled with correlated random effects. I find strong anticipation effects of the partner's death on the probability of depression, implying that the partner's death event cannot be assumed to be exogenous in econometric models. In the absence of any anticipation effects, the partner's death has long-lasting mental health consequences, leading to a significantly slower adaptation to widowhood. The results suggest that both anticipation effects and adaptation effects can be attributed to a caregiver burden and to the cause of death. The findings of this study have important implications for designing adequate social policies for the elderly US population that alleviate the negative consequences of bereavement. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.