The protective health effect of living with a partner is well established and studied in detail from an individual approach. Less is known about health differences among those who live with a partner. The idea behind combining information from both partners is to see whether the frequently established positive association between socioeconomic status (SES) and individual health is altered when also considering the partner’s SES profile. To fill this gap, we previously studied the influence combined educational profile on individual health status of middle-aged Spaniards. Results showed that a partner’s educational level is only meaningful among the low-educated, also after controlling for own and partner’s employment status. In the present study we explore whether educational profiles of retired elderly Spanish couples are also translated into health differences at the individual level.

We use data from around 1400 retired couples aged 66-80 from the 2012 Spanish EU-SILC sample. We apply logistic regression models to assess the association between individual health and own and partner’s SES status. We use additive and combined approaches to ascertain whether the latter provides any additional explanation of educational differences in health beyond what is obtained with an additive model.

Results show that adding partner’s educational attainment does not reduce the significant association between own education and health among men. Regarding women, including the partner’s educational level actually nullifies the association of her education on self-reported health. When we consider the combined educational variable for men, this is not significant, but among women we observe that they have worse health when both they and their partner are lowly educated. This suggests that economic and shared behavioural risks factors that lead to health deterioration are also mediated through the educational status of the partner when the partner has the same educational level.