• Survey Research
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.25-59
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• 2017

The current study investigated how elderly husbands and wives' marital satisfaction and depression change over time and examined how changes in marital satisfaction account for changes in depression between and within the dyads. The longitudinal dyadic data from the first wave(2006) to the fifth wave(2014) of the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging(KLoSA), collected by the Korea Employment Information Service, were used for the analyses. Because husbands and wives are interdependent within couples, we applied statistical models for dyadic data. The dyadic growth model(DGM) was used to model the trajectories of marital satisfaction and depressive symptoms. In order to analyze the association of these growth factors, we proposed the dyadic growth actor-partner interdependence model(DG-APIM) and applied the model to the data. The results showed that on average the husbands' marital satisfaction was higher but decreased faster over the course of the study than the wives'. It also showed that the average depression of the husbands was lower than that of the wives but the husbands' depression increased faster than the wives' over the course of the study. The variance of the averages of husbands' (wives's) depression was accounted for by that of wives'(husbands') marital satisfaction, showing a partner effect. The variance of the slopes of husbands'(wives') depression was accounted for by that of marital satisfaction of themselves, showing an actor effect. The results showed that there is a longitudinal interdependence between husbands and wives' marital satisfaction and depression and supported the marital discord model of depression.