중년에서 이혼과 신체건강의 관련성: 성별에 따른 가족/사회관계만족도의 매개효과

Objectives: This study examined whether divorce might be associated with physical health, and whether the association might be mediated by family and other social relationships. This study also evaluated if the ways in which family and other socialrelationships mediate the association between divorce and physcial health might differ between men and women. Methods: The analytic sample of this study was drawn from the 12th wave of the Korea Welfare Panel (2017), consisting of 4,167 middle-aged men and women aged between 40 and 64 who were either married or divorced at the time of the study. For analyses, mediation and moderated mediation analyses were carried out using SPSS PROCESS. Results: Results suggest that midlife divorced individuals had lower self-rated health than their married counterparts and the negative impact of divorce on self-rated health was mediated by satisfaction with family relationships. Gender moderated the mediation, such that the significant mediation effect was found only among divorced men. For women, neither family nor other social relationships mediated the association between divorce and self-rated health. No signifiant associations were found between divorce, family or social relationships, and chronic disease treatment duration. Conclusions: This study contributes to the literature by extending prior research on divorce that primarily focuses on the association between divorce and mental health.