Married People Live Longer

By JOANNA SCHAFFHAUSEN

MARRIED PEOPLE LIVE LONGER A new study finds that people who have never married have the highest risk of death in the United States , contrasting with other studies that have found the highest risk in divorced, separated or widowed populations. There are many reasons married people tend to be healthier, not the least of which is they tend to be wealthier. Published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, the new study finds that, compared with married people, people who are widowed are 40 percent more likely to die, people who are divorced or separated are 27 percent more likely to die, and people who have never married were 58 percent more likely to die. Authors believe that social isolation in never-married people may play a role in increasing their relative risk. However big these differences in death risk sound, they are actually quite small compared with some other more important factors. For example, people in their 50s are more than 1,500 percent more likely to die compared with people in their early 20s.