This is another intrigueing topic that bears further discussion.
Outside of the usual urging by aging parents to palm off their grown kids, there's some serious scientific work (lots actually) that have been done to investigation exactly what is so great about this oldest of social institutions (and whether it is still relevant, unchanged, in our progressive civilisation).
Of course, the very 1st question to address is if marriage itself is a selection bias? This asks if all studies will be expected to show that marriage is beneficial simply because only a certain mindset/group of people would marry, and hence be happier married, than another group which may be happier unmarried, and hence escape the statistics.
Conversely, what would happen if two unhealthy individuals got married? Perhaps one spouse may die early, but does that mean that widowhood is responsible for ill health? (in the remaining live partner)
One thing that is known is that marriage ups the per-head earnings of the couple, meaning that two can live together more cheaply than one individual. This means more moolah to spare. Always a good thought :)
Secondly, marriage automatically provides an emotional and physical foundation of support for both spouses, and these two things may translate to the gains that marriage seem to offer. Indirectly, less financial burden and the ability to vent or share with someone else may mean less incidence of psychiatric issues such as depression and anxiety. Married couples also have a higher chance of quitting risky behaviour such as alcoholism and smoking because they can moniter and encourage each other. These changes translate into well-documented health gains.
There is also a gain from beliefs prior to marriage. One study looked at churchgoers and non-churchgoers and found that those who reaped the most benefits were those who attended church, AND got married.
One quirk of marriage that researchers have found is that the benefits of marriage are resounding for males, but much less for females. They postulate that the unmarried female already has a better-established social network which offers her the same protective benefits as being married, while the male lifestyle/network changes dramatically after marriage.
To address the criticism that the "happiness" of marriage may be a transient effect (i.e. in newlyweds etc.) studies have been done longitudinally, following couples over a long period of time. Of particular mention is that marriage seems to drop the rates of alcohol consumption and depression very steeply compared to other groups. Conversely, divorce has also been shown to produce a surge in depression. With each successive divorce/remarriage, the benefits become less and less, and this is seen worse in females.
Some studies also examined the differences between married and cohabiting couples. Do the benefits come from actually living with someone, even without wedding vows? The data showed that the highest rate of alcoholism was in cohabitant men, and that there was no gain from cohabitation compared to marriage, hence the conclusion was that it wasn't simply an effect of having someone else around the house.
What about actual physical health? Curiously, men reap a very large and significant benefit from being married while women do not seem to gain very much at all in terms of lifespan. One funny side fact that appeared in this study was that time spent in front of the television correlated with earlier death, so the longer the TV was on, the shorter the life of the watcher. There is also a simple study looking into the rates of the common cold amongst married and unmarried people, and married people were found to contract the cold much less frequently.
They found some divergence in the data for longevity in men and women. In men, the married lived longest, followed by the previously married and then the never-married. In women however, the married lived longest, followed by the single, and THEN the previously-married. They also discovered that the QUALITY of the marriage affects the health of a woman, but not the health of a man. They also found that having children benefited the health of the woman, but had no effect upon the man.
Another amusing finding was that the health of a woman improved with marriage and stayed better longer if she DID NOT WORK. If she was part-time or full-time, her health benefits did not last.
So, dear ladies, the key to a healthy happy life is to have a good set of beliefs, get stuck into a great marriage, have kids, and stop work. Woo. That's something to think about alright, seeing that it is all evidence-based. This flies in the face of 200 years of sufrage.
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