A Healthy Marriage? Marital Status and Adult Mortality

This chapter shows that marital status has had a fairly consistent association with mortality over the entire twentieth century for men. Increasingly, this association was also found among women. Married men have a survival premium today, and the same was true in the past. For men, marriage has been associated with lower mortality throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century, while widowhood in particular has been associated with high mortality. The widowhood penalty is highest shortly after bereavement but persists in the long run, too. Over time, mortality differentials by marital status have increased for men, especially since 1950. It is remarkable that there is such stability in the survival advantage of married men despite the massive social, economic, and demographic changes during the period. The relationship between widowhood and mortality was weaker for women than for men but there was convergence in the patterns over time.