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Linking Financial Strain to Marital Instability: Examining the Roles of Emotional Distress and Marital Interaction

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Abstract

Using a sample consisting of 4,997 married couples from the National Survey of Families and Households, individual emotional distress, the occurrence of couple disagreements, couple fighting, and couple quality time together mediated the relationship between financial strain and personal assessments of marital instability. The overall results suggest that financial strain influences both positive and negative forms of couple interaction which are stronger mediators than personal emotional distress of the relationship between financial strain and marital instability. The results further suggest that there were no gender differences among these linkages.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Shari Gudmunson for her assistance, and thank two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions.

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Correspondence to Clinton G. Gudmunson.

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Gudmunson, C.G., Beutler, I.F., Israelsen, C.L. et al. Linking Financial Strain to Marital Instability: Examining the Roles of Emotional Distress and Marital Interaction. J Fam Econ Iss 28, 357–376 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-007-9074-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-007-9074-7

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