‘TIL DEATH DO US PART? DECLINING WIDOWHOOD AND RISING GRAY DIVORCE, 1980-2017

Abstract Roughly one-third of dissolutions among married persons aged 50 and older occur through divorce rather than widowhood, reflecting the rising gray divorce rate and lengthening life expectancies. We use data from the 1980 Vital Statistics and the 2017 American Community Survey (ACS) to estimate the divorce and widowhood rates among married individuals (aged 50+) in 1980 and 2017 to track how much the widowhood rate has declined and the divorce rate has risen. In 1980, women’s widowhood rates exceeded their divorce rates at all ages. For men, the rate of divorce outpaced the rate of widowhood through ages 50-54. By 2017, divorce rates were higher for women through ages 55-59 and for men through ages 60-64, coinciding with the growth in gray divorce. We also examine subgroup variation in the 2017 patterns and the sociodemographic correlates of having experienced divorce versus widowhood during the past year using the ACS data.

we illustrate the knowledge gained by researchers about the challenging environmental contexts in which study participants are navigating and how narratives that are both personal and collective co-emerge. We examine how these narratives illustrate concerns of health and wellbeing from a life course perspective and index relationships of residents to their spaces. We conclude by offering lessons learned on investigating community meetings as a way of ensuring research is "community based."

THE INTERGENERATIONAL EFFECTS OF THE NEW DEAL WORK RELIEF PROGRAMS ON LATE-LIFE OUTCOMES: AN 80-PLUS-YEAR FOLLOW-UP STUDY Sepideh Modrek 1 , 1. San Francisco State University, San Francisco, California, United States
Evidence from multiple disciplines suggests that early-life conditions and environments affect outcomes across the life course. However, less is known about the effects of policy interventions targeted to adults and communities that may have intergenerational consequences on exposed children. In this study, we undertake novel data linkages to examine the effects of the New Deal work-relief programs on long-term health, disability and mortality outcomes of children born between 1920-1940. We first link the American Manufacturing Cohort (AMC) workforce backward to their childhood census records to capture parental and community exposure to New Deal work-relief programs. We then test the hypothesis that employment in New Deal work-relief programs is associated with lower levels of chronic disease, lower rates of disability and delayed mortality for both the children in benefitting households and children in non-benefit households living in areas that received greater amounts of New Deal funding.

INFLUENCES OF CAREWORK INTENSITY ON DAILY TIME USE PATTERNS OF CAREGIVERS Liana C. Sayer 1 , 1. University of Maryland Department of Sociology, College Park, Maryland, United States
With the aging of the Baby Boom generation, increasing numbers of older adults require assistance in their daily lives and most help comes from family members. Delays in childbearing mean many adult elder care providers are simultaneously raising children. Although past research has documented disparities in psychological distress and financial costs, less is known about the social costs resulting from elder caregiving and how this varies by parental status. We examine the social costs of elder caregiving by comparing elder and child care configurations to investigate three questions. First, do the daily time use patterns of elder caregivers differ by parental status? Second, do the daily time use patterns of elder caregivers differ by caregiving intensity? Third, does caregiving intensity moderate associations of elder caregiving and parental status on daily time use? We address these questions using nationally representative time diary data from the 2011-2017 American Time Use Survey (ATUS). Roughly one-third of dissolutions among married persons aged 50 and older occur through divorce rather than widowhood, reflecting the rising gray divorce rate and lengthening life expectancies. We use data from the 1980 Vital Statistics and the 2017 American Community Survey (ACS) to estimate the divorce and widowhood rates among married individuals (aged 50+) in 1980 and 2017 to track how much the widowhood rate has declined and the divorce rate has risen. In 1980, women's widowhood rates exceeded their divorce rates at all ages. For men, the rate of divorce outpaced the rate of widowhood through ages 50-54. By 2017, divorce rates were higher for women through ages 55-59 and for men through ages 60-64, coinciding with the growth in gray divorce. We also examine subgroup variation in the 2017 patterns and the sociodemographic correlates of having experienced divorce versus widowhood during the past year using the ACS data.

HOUSEHOLDS AND LIVING ARRANGEMENTS OF OLDER PERSONS AROUND THE WORLD
Yumiko Kamiya, 1 Yumiko Kamiya, 1 and Sara Hertog 1 ,

United Nations, New York, New York, United States
The household living arrangements of older personswhether living alone, with a spouse or partner, with their children or in multi-generational households -can be an important factor associated with their health, economic status and overall well-being. Understanding the patterns and trends in older persons' living arrangements is thus relevant for global efforts to achieve the sustainable development goals, in particular those targeting poverty, hunger and health. The United Nations Database on the Households and Living Arrangements of Older Persons 2018 presents evidence drawn from 672 unique data sources, including census and survey microdata samples archived at IPUMS-International and household rosters from Demographic and Health Surveys, among other sources. The resulting dataset describes older persons' households across 147 countries or areas, representing approximately 97 per cent of persons aged 60 or over globally.

NOVEL DATA AND APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF HEALTH AND AGING IN NSHAP
Chair: Linda J. Waite, University of Chicago, Chicago,

Illinois, United States
The National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP) is a longitudinal, population-based study that seeks to improve an understanding of the well-being of older, community-dwelling Americans. It accomplishes this by affording researchers a wide range of high quality measures that enable examining interactions among physical health and illness, medication use, cognitive function, emotional health, sensory function, health behaviors, social connectedness, sexuality, and relationship quality. The panelists in this symposium use NSHAP data to shed light on previously unor underexplored aspects of health during aging. Kaufman et al. use interviewer ratings of respondents' skin shade along with respondents' individual experiences of discrimination, neighborhood racial composition, and other factors to characterize heterogeneity in the racial experience and how heterogeneity relates to health inequities. Riley integrates information on respondents' residential region at birth and in older age to show that older adults who left the South are less healthy than those who stay in the South, and that social embeddedness helps to explain the health benefits for those who stay. Huang et al. take advantage of rich structural and functional social connectedness data to show that selfreported hearing impairment is associated with depth but not breadth of social connections. Huisingh-Scheetz et al.
capitalizes on performance measures of gait speed and chair stands obtained at each wave to examine whether repeated measures improve the ability to predict loss of independence in activities of daily living. Discussant will discuss the importance, strengths, and weaknesses of these papers, and consider implications for future research.

THE MULTIPLE DIMENSIONS OF THE RACE EXPERIENCE AND ASSOCIATIONS WITH HEALTH IN OLDER ADULTS
Jerry Kaufman 1 , 1. University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States Race is experienced along a number of dimensions. In the United States, education, family background (e.g., parents' education), skin shade, experiences of racial discrimination, neighborhood racial composition, state/region of birth, and interracial marriage help to define the "race experience." Many of these factors have been individually associated with adverse outcomes for African Americans relative to Whites, but little research has examined how these factors cohere within individuals. Using a national survey of African American and White older adults, we employed latent class