• Journal of Family Resource Management and Policy Review
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.17-32
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• 2018

The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of family life stress and family values on marital stability among middle-aged couples. The subjects included a total of 302 men and women aged 45-64 who had been married for more than 20 years and were living in Seoul. The collected data were statistically analyzed with the SPSS 21.0 Package. First, Cronbach's alpha was calculated to measure the reliability of the scale that assessed the variables of the research model. Then, mean and standard deviation were calculated to determine the degrees of family life stress, family values, and marital stability among the subjects. Finally, a hierarchical multiple regression analysis was performed to identify factors that affected the subjects' marital stability. The results revealed that the level of family life stress in middle-aged married men and women was slightly higher than the mean value. Of all the sub-scales of family life stress, the subjects were found to experience the most stress from factors related to financial pressure, followed by family relationships, a sense of loss within a family, and work-family compatibility. Therefore, financial problems were one of the critical stressors for middle-aged married couples. Also, for this demographic, the levels of family values and marital stability were higher than the medians. The factors affecting marital stability in middle-aged couples were identified to be family relationship stress, financial stress, subjective economic status, family values, stress related to work-familycompatibility,religion,andage.Thedegreeofmaritalstabilitywashigherinmiddle-agedcouplesa stheirstresslevelsfromfamilyrelationshipsandfinancialproblemswerelower.Moreover,thehigherthes ubjectiveeconomicstatusandthemoretraditionalthefamilyvalues,thehigherthedegreeofmaritalstabili ty.Finally,marriedcoupleswhowerereligioushadalowerlevelofstressfromwork-family compatibility, and the younger the couples, the higher the degree of marital stability.