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Getting married – and staying
married – is good for your health
By Christe Bruderlin-Nelson, Contributing
Editor
Health Behavior News Service
A
stable, long-term marriage can be good for
your health, but divorce or widowhood leave
a lasting scar on the health of middle-aged
and older people, according to a new study.
Remarriage seems to
reduce but not erase the damage done by
losing a marriage, and those who remain
single after a marriage ends show
consistently worse health than those who
remarried.
People who have never
married are disadvantaged on some measures
of health compared to the divorced or
widowed, but do better on others, the
researchers found.
“We argue that losing a marriage through
divorce or widowhood is extremely stressful
and that a high-stress period takes a toll
on health,” said study co-author Linda Waite
said.
“Think of health
as money in the bank. Think of a marriage as
a mechanism for ‘saving’ or adding to
health. Think of divorce as a period of very
high expenditures.”
Waite is the Lucy Flower Professor of
Sociology and director of the Center on
Aging at the University of Chicago.
The study looked at four key aspects of
midlife health: chronic conditions, mobility
limitations, self-rated health and
depressive symptoms. Waite and colleagues
found that a significant disruption in
marital stability, such as divorce or
spousal death, often has a prolonged impact,
negatively affecting all four areas.
The researchers drew data from the Health
and Retirement Study, a nationally
representative, longitudinal study that
looked at individuals age 50 and above.
They analyzed data from
8,652 white, black and Hispanic people
between the ages of 51 and 61.
The study appears in the
September issue of the Journal of Health
and Social Behavior.
“While the saying goes, ‘Better to have
loved and lost,’ multiple divorces create
multiple prolonged stressful conditions and
undermine personal empowerment — far worse
than never marrying,” said stress-management
specialist Debbie Mandel.
“A good marriage is like
making deposits in your health savings
account for midlife and the golden years.”
The researchers did not find a difference in
the number of chronic conditions for
unmarried people, but they did find
significantly more depressive symptoms and
mobility limitations and significantly worse
self-rated health than they did in currently
married individuals.
While the study was strong due to its large
sample size, detailed health history and
clear marital data, Waite and Mandel agreed
that its biggest limitation was that it did
not look at marital quality.
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