Equitable marriages could save lives (and love)

Husbands live longer than single men, but for wives, the calculation is more complex.

- Sarah Green Carmichael

Most Americans who marry say "I do" between 25 and 30—ages when serious illness is probably not the first thing on their minds. But in a way, tying the knot is a major health decision. For men, just being married is a predictor of living longer. For women, the picture is more complex.

Among men with prostate cancer, married men survive longer than single men; married men are also less likely to die of cardiovascular disease. And that's not because healthier men are likelier to get married. In fact, "research shows the reverse is true," concludes a summary of the studies by Harvard Health Publishing. "Unhealthy men actually marry earlier, are less likely to divorce, and are more likely to remarry."

"There is a huge literature showing that husbands benefit from their wives' support in terms of mortality and health outcomes—much more than the other way around," says Dr. Joan Monin, an associate professor of public health at Yale School of Medicine. (Most of the research focuses on opposite-sex couples.)

When it's the wife who is sick, the husband sometimes struggles to support her, according to several studies from the 1990s to the 2000s. A man with cancer faced about a 3 percent chance of divorce, according to one paper, but when the woman was the patient, her chances of getting divorced soared to 21 percent. And multiple studies found that women were much more likely to donate kidneys to their husbands than husbands were to do the same for their wives. Some doctors and nurses say they still see those sorts of gender imbalances today.