You’re Why I Have Trust Issues: Financial Fraud and Older Adult Relationship Formation

Older adults are increasingly victims of financial fraud. Awareness of financial fraud within older adults has been on the rise, however, existing evidence has underestimated the prevalence and extent of this victimization due to the sensitivity of the topic. Although the effects of fraud victimization, such as financial troubles, mental health deterioration, and decreased social trust, are well documented, little is known about how the victimization affects subsequent interpersonal and socioemotional behaviors, such as romantic relationship formation, in later life. Experiencing victimization may have a heavy impact on relationship formation due to barriers involving loss of trust in others. To examine how financial fraud impacts the romantic relationship formation of older adults, I used data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). Focusing on respondents who had experienced some form of financial fraud and were not in a romantic relationship at this time, I assessed changes in their relationship status over time, measured as marriage, in subsequent waves of the HRS. Through a logistic regression, I had found that there was no statistical significance between the experience of financial fraud and subsequent older adult relationship formation. Despite the result, this study is still important to provide a scale for the share of single older adult respondents who experienced financial fraud and possible subsequent changes in romantic relationship status. Since finances and trust are involved in partner selection, becoming a victim of financial fraud could make it harder for older adults to find a partner in their later years.