Research on "the widowhood effect" shows that mortality rates are greater among people who have recently lost a spouse. There are several medical and psychological explanations for this (e.g., "broken heart syndrome") and sociological explanations that focus on spouses' shared social-environmental exposures. We expand on sociological perspectives by arguing that couples' social connections to others play a role in this phenomenon. Using panel data on 1,169 older adults from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project, we find that mortality is associated with how well embedded one's spouse is in one's own social network. The widowhood effect is greater among those whose spouses were not well connected to one's other network members. We speculate that the loss of a less highly embedded spouse signals the loss of unique, valuable, nonredundant social resources from one's network. We discuss theoretical interpretations, alternative explanations, limitations, and directions for future research.

中文翻译：

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“我爱你至死不渝”：社交网络和丧偶对死亡率的影响。


对“丧偶效应”的研究表明，最近失去配偶的人的死亡率更高。对此有几种医学和心理学解释（例如“心碎综合症”）和社会学解释，重点关注配偶共同的社会环境暴露。我们扩展了社会学的观点，认为夫妻与他人的社会联系在这一现象中发挥了作用。使用国家社会生活、健康和老龄化项目中 1,169 名老年人的面板数据，我们发现死亡率与配偶在自己社交网络中的融入程度有关。对于那些配偶与其他网络成员关系不佳的人来说，丧偶效应更大。我们推测，失去一个嵌入度较低的配偶意味着一个人的网络中独特的、有价值的、非冗余的社会资源的丧失。我们讨论理论解释、替代解释、局限性和未来研究的方向。