Marriage and health

Marriage and health are closely related. Married people experience lower morbidity and mortality across such diverse health threats as cancer, heart attacks, and surgery. There are gender differences in these effects which may be partially due to men's and women’s relative status. Most research on marriage and health has focused on heterosexual couples, and more work is needed to clarify the health effects on same-sex marriage. Simply being married, as well as the quality of one’s marriage, has been linked to diverse measures of health. Research has examined the social-cognitive, emotional, behavioral and biological processes involved in these links.

Beyond marriage, social relationships more broadly have a powerful impact on health. A meta-analysis of 148 studies found that those with stronger social relationships had a 50% lower risk of all-cause mortality. Conversely, loneliness is associated with increased risk for cardiovascular disease, and all-cause mortality. Little work has directly compared the health impacts of marriage compared to those of non-romantic relationships, such as connections with friends or colleagues. However, there are several reasons why marriage may exert a greater health impact than other relationships, even other cohabiting relationships: married couples spend time together during a wide variety of activities, such as eating, leisure, housekeeping, child-care and sleep. Spouses also share resources and investments such as joint finances or home-ownership. Relative to other relationships, the increased interdependence of marriage serves as a source for more intense support.

Romantic couples who live together, but are unmarried, may represent a middle ground in health benefits between those who are married, and those who self-identify as single. However, people live together without getting married for many different reasons; cohabitation may serve as a prelude to marriage. Selection factors of race, ethnicity, and social-economic status predispose certain groups to cohabit unmarried, and these factors also affect the health benefits of marriage and cohabitation.

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