Life dissatisfactions, job dissatisfaction and illness of married men over time

This study examines the degree to which job and marital satisfaction and participation in leisure activities could predict concurrent and future health status relative to ethnicity, class and occupational factors, and mental health. Data were obtained from a longitudinal study of a random sample of 1034 Manhattan families with at least one child 6 to 18 years of age. The wives in these families were interviewed twice at 5-year intervals. Multiple regression analyses, using variables abstracted from the records of 640 wives of working husbands, indicated that husbands' health status at Time I (R = .33) and Time II, 5 years later (R = .28) was significantly predicted by the Time I assessments on 12 independent variables. The largest single unique contributor, i.e. net of all other independent variables, to concurrent husband's health was job dissatisfaction (partial r = .15), followed by husband's institutionalization for mental illness (r = .14), being Spanish (r = .10), and the factor of Unhappy Marriage (r = .09). This preliminary investigation indicated that uncertain life satisfactions were important predictors for either concurrent or future health status which operated across class, ethnic, occupational and mental health factors. These findings tend to support models which postulate stressful psychosocial conditions as potential etiologic agents in the development of illness.