ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the next step in the postulated process from economic and emotional distress to disruptions in marital relations. It focuses on hardship-induced marital hostility and its consequences. Mounting economic pressures generally bring budgetary matters to the fore, enhancing preoccupation with financial issues that, in many families, generate frustration, anger, and general demoralization. These strong emotional responses to serious financial difficulties are consonant with findings from a rich history of social psychological research that demonstrates the unfortunate consequences of negative events and conditions for human health and behaviour. The impact of the aversive experience of economic stress on individual well-being is further exacerbated by its indirect effects through the responses of other family members. Chronic economic hardship was even more strongly related to marital tension, both concurrently and prospectively. Marital tension also was associated with higher rates of marital instability (separation or divorce), a result that is consistent with other reports linking economic hardship to marital dissolution.
