Marriage has health benefits

Marriage, new research confirms, can be good for your health.

Researchers surveyed more than 80,000 Americans and found that people who never married were 58 percent more likely to die during the course of an eight-year study than their married peers.

Compared with people living with their spouses at the start of the study, those who were divorced or separated were 39 percent more likely to die during the follow-up period, and widowed people were 28 percent more likely to die.

While previous studies have shown a link between social connectedness and longer life, this study was large enough to suggest specific causes of death. The researchers used data from the 1989 National Health Interview Survey and death certification data from 1997. The paper will be published in September in The Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

The correlation for marriage, however, did not apply in cases of cancer and pulmonary disease. The researchers did not include gay couples or unmarried heterosexual couples living together.

The study’s co-author, Richard G. Kronick, of the University of California, San Diego, suggested that “it may be that there is something physiologically protective about being married.”

Kronick also suggested that people who are healthier are more likely to marry, and that marriage itself does not reduce risks.

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