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Page: << Prev | 1 | 2 "Marriage helps men out more than women," Markey said, citing more results from the study, which was published in the journal Sex Roles in 2005. Married women and single women both tend to be "health proactive" compared with their single peers, they found.
"I guess the (married) women may be reminding the men" about good health practices, said Markey.
As for why single women may stay healthy despite their lack of marriage? "Single women tend to have good social networks," Markey said. They have people to turn to when they need help, typically more so than single men, he added.
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But another researcher, Howard S. Friedman, a psychology professor at the University of California, Riverside, said that singles shouldn't necessarily expect a lack of wedding vows to shorten their lives.
"We did not find that singles are at greater risk for premature mortality," he said, citing his long-running research on predictors of health and longevity.
"We found, confirming most other research, that married men live longer -- that is, are at less risk of premature mortality -- than divorced men, but this was not primarily due to any protective effects of the marriage itself," he said.
"Rather, it seems both that some men are at greater risk for poor marriages and poor health, and that poor marriages, breakups and divorces are stressful," Friedman said.
Friedman's research also links childhood personality, especially conscientiousness and not experiencing a parental divorce in childhood, as predictive of longevity.
For more information
To learn more about Friedman's health and longevity research, visit the University of California, Riverside.
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