Evolution of Widowhood Lifespan and Its Gender and Educational Inequalities in Finland Over Three Decades

Widowhood is a disruptive life event, and in aging societies, increased numbers of individuals are potentially exposed to it. Yet, we lack a comprehensive understanding of the demography of widowhood. Using total population data with information on marital and cohabiting unions, discrete-time event-history analysis, and incidence-based multistate life tables, we analyze lifetime risk of widowhood, mean age at becoming widowed, widowhood expectancy, and variation in years spent widowed, and also document gender and educational differences in these metrics over the last three decades in Finland. Our results show that, over time, individuals are less likely to experience widowhood, and when they do, it occurs at older ages. Compared with men, women have higher widowhood risk and widowhood expectancy (duration) and a lower mean age at widowhood. Widowhood expectancy for women declined from 8 to 6 years between 1988 and 2018, whereas for men it stagnated at around 2 years. Low-educated women faced more widowhood years than the highly educated, while the opposite held for men. In showing decreased risks, delayed onset, and shorter widowhood expectancy, particularly among women, our results suggest that the current older population may experience reduced exposure to the psychosocial and financial challenges of widowhood, with potentially reduced caregiving burden on families and the state.