Compensatory couple effects: How a spouse’s life goals impact one’s own career and health outcomes

Abstract

Life goals guide one’s behavior and can impact their life outcomes, but may conflict with their partner’s goals. Using a longitudinal dataset, we examined whether one’s life goals prospectively predict health and career outcomes for themselves and their spouse (Ndyads = 6,198). Overall, there were more actor than partner effects, but partner effects were especially numerous for health outcomes. Generally, husbands and wives had a similar distribution of effects and actor and partner effects were in the same direction, but this was not always the case. Few actor-partner interactions emerged and partner similarity rarely moderated effects. These findings indicate a partner’s life goals meaningfully and independently impact one’s health and career outcomes, with associations emerging for both husbands and wives.