Mortality Differentials by Marital Status: An International Comparison

Abstract

Although the greater longevity of married people as compared with unmarried persons has been demonstrated repeatedly, there have been very few studies of a comparative nature. We use log-linear rate models to analyze marital-status-specific death rates for a large number of developed countries. The results indicate that divorced persons, especially divorced men, have the highest death rates among the unmarried groups of the respective genders; the excess mortality of unmarried persons relative to the married has been generally increasing over the past two to three decades; and divorced and widowed persons in their twenties and thirties have particularly high risks of dying, relative to married persons of the same age. In addition, the analysis suggests that a selection process is operating with regard to single and divorced persons: the smaller the proportion of persons who never marry or who are divorced, the higher the resulting death rates.

The Impact of Salmon Bias on the Hispanic Mortality Advantage: New Evidence from Social Security Data

“…Poisson regression is commonly used to estimate mortality with grouped data (e.g. Hu & Goldman 1990). We modeled the number of deaths during the observation period as a function of the number of person-years of exposure, age in 5-year age groups, and place of residence (US residence versus non-US residence).…”

How is mortality affected by money, marriage, and stress?

“…Hu and Goldman (1990) Alternatively, there may be no beneficial effects of marriage upon health, but rather it may simply be that more healthy individuals are 'selected' into marriage. Gove (1973) argues that the reduced mortality rates of the married can, in part, be attributed to the psychosocial status of marriage in society and the greater social isolation of unmarried individuals.…”

“…Schoenbach et al (1986), however, suggest that the beneficial effects of social networks are limited to elderly people who have few other social ties. Hu and Goldman (1990) argue that if more healthy individuals are selected into marriage, then mortality rates among the unmarried will be lower where these groups form a larger proportion of the population. In this case, where fewer people are married, the stock of single individuals in the population will have, on average, better health, and the aggregate mortality differential will be lower.…”

Widowhood and mortality among the elderly: The modifying role of neighborhood concentration of widowed individuals

“…The widowhood effect has been found in bereaved men and women of all ages around the world, using cross-sectional and longitudinal data, with and without covariate controls, and diverse statistical methodologies (Helsing, Comstock, & Szklo, 1982;Hu & Goldman, 1990;Kraus & Lilienfeld, 1959;Lillard & Waite, 1995;Parkes, Benjamin, & Fitzgerald, 1969). Recent longitudinal studies put the long-term excess risk of death associated with widowhood compared to marriage at around 15%, net of controls.…”