Racial and Ethnic Differences in the Timing of First Marriage and Smoking Cessation

Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (N = 4,050), we consider the relationship between the timing of family formation and positive changes in health behavior. Theories that predict both positive and negative associations are tested. The findings suggest that both mechanisms operate and that the direction of the association depends on the respondent's race or ethnicity. Whites who marry early are less likely to quit smoking, whereas Whites who marry on time and Blacks and Hispanics who marry at all ages are more likely to quit. The analysis refines the understanding of how family formation shapes changes in health behaviors differentially across the life course, and it underscores the difference in this process for individuals from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. Key Words: adult development and aging, demography, life events or transitions, marriage, race, tobacco use. Marriage provides an excellent example of how social position and health are interrelated over the life course, such that some individuals experience cumulative advantages, whereas others experience cumulative disadvantages in light of selection into and out of marriage (Goldman, 2001; Gove, 1973; Wyke & Ford, 1992). In this study, we view individual trajectories into marriage and out of health risk behaviors as linked processes that may explain why marriage is protective of health. We explicitly focus on marriage as an early life event that helps shape the trajectories of physical well-being in later life. Marriage is conceptualized as part of a process of family formation that involves changes in one's perceived social role, psychosocial support, psychosocial stress, new material resources, and new material demands. We examine how it offers the potential to both support and discourage poor health behaviors such as daily smoking. We draw theoretical distinctions between those who marry early, on time, and late and examine these groups in relationship to the timing of smoking cessation in different racial or ethnic groups. By studying changes in health behaviors relative to the timing of marriage, and how these processes may differ by age and race or ethnicity, we seek to extend the literature that relates family formation to later life well-being (Pienta, Hayward, & Jenkins, 2000; Rogers, 1996; Waite, 1995). Cigarette smoking is a particularly appropriate health indicator for studying life course changes in the exposure to health risks for several reasons. First, smoking is one of the most prevalent health risk behaviors in the United States and one of the riskiest in terms of its long-term effects on health (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2005a, 2005b). Second, the health risks associated with smoking depend on a pattern of entry into and exits from regular use of tobacco that accumulate as individuals age (Peto et al., 2000). Because both smoking and marriage patterns vary by race or ethnicity, studying these relationships offers a good opportunity to elucidate potentially differentiating effects of family formation on well-being across racial and ethnic groups. Additionally, age-related patterns of smoking initiation, regular tobacco use, and cessation overlap with age-related patterns of transitions in other areas of a smoker's life, most notably here, marriage and family formation, but also with educational completion and entry into the workforce. The relationship between age and smoking shows a consistent partem across cohorts, such that smoking prevalence increases sharply through the late teens and peaks in the early 20s, and then shows a slow and steady decline (Chen & Kandel, 1995; Rogers, Nam, & Hummer, 1995; Tucker, Ellickson, Orlando, Martino & Klein, 2005). Congruent with the peak and decline in smoking, marriage rates increase through young adulthood and the number of ever-married men and women stabilizes in midlife (Cherlin, 1992; Goldstein & Kenney, 2001; Kreider & Fields, 2002). …