FIC Blog

Yet another study has appeared suggesting that the common of sense of previous generations–marriage is good, divorce is bad–had it right all along:

Getting married and staying married increases life expectancy by about eight or nine years, according to federal death records.

But the poets are wrong to suggest ’tis better to have loved and lost. Divorced people have the shortest lifespan of all.

Married men who died in 2003 had an average lifespan of 77.6 years, well above the 69.2-year average among men who’ve never married and 67.1-year average among divorced men, according to data from 2.2 million death certificates released this month by the National Center for Health Statistics.

Married women lived an average of 81 years, a significant improvement over the 77.4-year average among the never-wed and the 72-year average among divorcees?

“Married people are happier. And there is a lot of evidence that depression is a risk factor,” [scholar Maggie] Gallagher said. “It makes sense that if you are generally happy in life, that would be both a cause and an effect to a longer life.” But other benefits of marriage are easy to understand.

“I call it nagging. You need someone in your life to remind you to stop smoking, buckle up your seatbelt, eat some vegetables,” she said. “So many of the messages in our culture say that we should be free to do whatever we want. But I think people are truly happier when they belong to somebody.”