Evolution of widowhood lifespan and its gender and educational inequalities in Finland over three decades

Widowhood is a disruptive life event, and in ageing 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 lifetables, we analyse lifetime risk of widowhood, mean age at becoming widowed, widowhood expectancy, and variation in years spent widowed, and 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. Women have higher widowhood risk, expectancy, and a lower mean age at widowhood than men. Widowhood expectancy for women declined from 8 to 6 years, while for men, it stagnated at around 2 years. Low-educated women faced more widowhood years than highly educated, while the opposite holds for men. By 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.