Life-Long Wedlock Keeps Doctor Away

• Post by: Bryce J. Christensen
• September 15, 2009

What can be done to lower risks of diabetes, cancer, heart attack, and stroke, the leading causes of death and disability in the United States? Health professionals are quick to hound Americans about eating right and exercising regularly. Yet perhaps they should also be calling attention to the conclusions of a study by scholars at the University of North Carolina and Princeton that found that the longer men and women stayed married—and married to the same spouse—the lower risks they face of developing these chronic conditions. Armed with fifty years of age-specific marriage and health data representing 9,000 men and women born between 1931 and 1941 who participated in the biannual waves of the Health and Retirement Survey between 1992 and 2000, Matthew Dupre and Sarah Meadows calculate what they call the hazard rate (the instantaneous probability of an illness or health event occurring at a certain age, given it has not already occurred) by gender of various life trajectories. Those trajectories include men and women who have never married, those who are married, and those who have experienced up to three cumulative transitions such as divorce, widowhood, and remarriage. The researchers found that marriage duration correlates with lower rates of diabetes, cancer, heart attack, and stroke. The preventative effects of marriage duration at a certain age were greater for men than for women, even as the effects were statistically significant for both genders. For example, a 50-year-old male who has been married ten years faces a hazard rate of .64; if he has been married twenty years, the hazard rate is significantly lower (.41). For a 50-year-old female who has been married ten years, the hazard rate is .76; if she has been married twenty years, the rate is .58, which the researchers call a “sizable” reduction. On the other hand, divorce transitions were found to increase significantly the likelihood of disease for both men and women. For every divorce