Health declines can change older adults’ social participation and social relationships. Yet, researchers rarely examine how the health and disability of one’s spouse might affect one’s engagement with the social world, even though stressors and life strains are often experienced as a couple or as a family. Using the partner data from Wave II (2010–11) of the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (N=953 heterosexual couples), we model the relationship between cognitive and functional limitations in one spouse and reports of social participation and relationship quality in the other. We find that one spouse’s functional health is associated with the other’s reports of relationship quality (partner effects) but that cognitive health is mostly associated with one’s own reports of relationship quality and social participation only (actor effects). These associations vary by gender and by type of social relationship. For example, wives report lower support and higher strain from spouses when husbands have ADLs, but husbands’ marital quality is not associated with wives’ functional limitations. Also, husbands report less strain from family and friends when wives have IADLs, but wives do not experience similar “social benefits” when husbands have functional limitations. These findings underscore the importance of gender and both partners’ health in shaping social life at older ages.
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