Although AUD is associated with marriage and divorce in population-based samples, little is known about whether these associations are also observed in high-risk samples. In the present study, we examined the associations between lifetime AUD and marital outcomes in a sample enriched for AUD vulnerability. We tested whether the effects of AUD on marital behaviors are robust to or modified by one’s polygenic loading for alcohol problems and psychiatric comorbidities in a high-risk sample of European and African ancestry participants. Importantly, our analysis allowed for simultaneous estimation of these phenotypic AUD-marital outcome associations while accounting for familial factors that are genetically and environmentally clustered in the multigenerational COGA sample.
