It’s one of the daft ironies of life, an enduring caricature of relations between the sexes: Marriage is something women seek and men resist, or to be more accurate, commitment is a trait more easily found in women than in men. And yet, it is men that benefit the most from marital commitment.
Regardless of gender, being single is simply not good for you. Living alone significantly reduces your life expectancy, but the effect is more dramatic if you are male. For instance a 40-year-old man living alone in France is almost twice as likely to die within the year as a man with similar social and economic conditions but living with a partner. This is one of the results of a study published this week by Insee, the French statistical institute. Authored by Rachid Bouhia, this is one in a long line of epidemiological studies that documents the beneficial effects of sharing your life with a loved one. Increased life expectancy is not limited to sharing your daily life with a partner; the best outcome is associated with having a family. According to this study, those who are likely to live longest are those who have fathered or mothered two children — not one, not three, not six, but two.
Of course the problem with studies based on statistical extrapolations is that they don’t explain very much. All they do is pinpoint a finding; they shed little light on the causes of that finding. For a start, we do not know whether people who are healthier are more likely to get married or whether it is getting married per se which makes them healthier.
And I use the term marriage because though this latest French study did not differentiate between couples who are married and those who are cohabiting, studies that did found that marriage has a stronger protective effect on health than cohabitation.
So what is it about marriage that makes you live longer?
The most consistent finding is that a healthy heart is more likely to be a happily married heart. Unmarried men in particular tend to have higher blood pressure and be more prone to cardiovascular disease. Partly, this is because women — God bless us! — are so good at looking after their families. Married men will be better fed than bachelors, less likely to overindulge — oh the power of a nagging wife! — sent more promptly to the doctor when they show symptoms of ill health and generally live a healthier lifestyle than their friends who have yet to take the plunge into marital bliss.
But do not be fooled into thinking that marriage is a magic bullet that can heal just by its sheer existence. A bad marriage is one of the worse things that can happen to your health. Marital stress has been shown to have all kinds of detrimental effects. The key word is stress. Having a partner whom you share you worries with, who helps you manage the daily business of life, with whom you are building a future and with whom you feel secure and settled essentially means a life with a lot less stress than the life of someone who is having to go it alone, or who is facing a daily battle at home.
But why is marriage more beneficial to men than to women?
Part of the answer comes from the differences between unmarried men and women. Unmarried women tend to look after themselves better than unmarried men, which essentially means that as far as health is concerned, unmarried men have more to gain from marriage than unmarried women.
There are also some interesting socioeconomic factors. For instance this week’s Insee study reports that men who live alone tend to come from disadvantaged backgrounds whilst women who live alone tend to come from the opposite end of the spectrum: They are likely to be successful career woman or women of independent means. It is also because marriage in its traditional sense is geared toward satisfying the needs of men more than the needs of women. For one thing, it is easier for a man to marry than for a woman. This is particularly evident among older adults. A widowed man is far more likely to remarry, and often to a younger woman, than a widow of the same age and situation. The Insee study reports that for people aged 80 and over, over 70 percent of men are living with a partner compared to 44 percent of women.
For another, if having a stable and secure home environment is more important to men than to women and if an intimate nurturing confiding relationship is more important to women — even if I don’t fully subscribe to this view — then marriage provides the former more readily than the latter. It follows that men are more likely to be satisfied than women. It is unfortunately rather common for women to find themselves frustrated in their desire for marital closeness.
One of the most interesting — and one of the most consistent — findings is the relationship between marriage and depression. Whilst married men are significantly less likely to be depressed than unmarried men, the reverse is true for women. And when it comes to unhappy marriages, women are three times likely as men to become depressed. The figures become even more dramatic when children are taken into the equation. The women at highest risk of depression are those with three or more young children at home. If that woman happens to be in an unhappy, stressful marriage, her risk of becoming depressed shoots up.
Oh and I almost forgot, marriage does not just predict a longer healthier life, it also makes you richer, on average a whopping 10-20 percent richer. Married people earn more than unmarried people, even when all other factors are taken into account. Whether this is because they work harder, or because people who are financially successful are more likely to get married or because society likes to reward married people is another matter.
So boys, if you want to live longer and earn more, you know what you need to do!
