Background: There has been a growing interest in understanding relationships between educational attainment of an individual and his or her spouse's health. However, the issue has not been extensively studied, particularly in East Asian nations.
Purpose: We investigated the relation between individuals' specific dietary behaviors and their spouses' educational attainment in China.
Method: A total of 2071 individuals were surveyed in the 2012 Zhuzhou Healthy City Project, in China. Multivariate logistic regressions were used to model two specific individual dietary behaviors (i.e., oil intake and salt intake) as a function of own and their spouses' educational attainment. The models were also constructed by gender.
Results: Spouses' education was positively associated both with individuals' oil intake and salt intake after adjusting for the demographic characteristics, socioeconomic status, and health knowledge. Also, females (i.e., wives) were more likely to benefit from her spouse's education in terms of healthy dietary behaviors. When his or her spouse's level of education were greater, an individual was more likely to meet the dietary guidelines of salt and oil intakes. This Chinese study supports the male dominance hypothesis (i.e., males are more influential on female's health behavior) and the highest status dominance hypothesis (i.e., individuals with higher socioeconomic status are more influential on those with lower status). In terms of the social cognitive theory, married couples exchange health knowledge and share health behaviors.
Conclusion: Spouses' educational attainment and health knowledge should be incorporated into the design of health promotion programs targeting married couples in China. Finally, additional theoretical explanations and implications are evaluated in this article.