Other research has found that older people in partnered households live longer, stay healthier and feel better than those without partners, although it tends to be men who gain the relative advantage in these arrangements (Hess and Soldo 1985, cited in Jerome 1993:244). It is within this immediate social environment that complementary roles and coping patterns of partners develop over long periods of time together. When one partner requires care, the other partner, more often the woman, is the first to provide it, and this continues even when adult children are close at hand. An explanation for lower levels of frailty among those in partnered households, then, is likely to include the impact of mutually provided compensations for functional loss