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Married people are no longer healthier than singletons

Woman in front of skyline
Music to our ears [Photo: Pexels]

For years, we’ve assumed that married people are consistently healthier than their single counterparts.

Presumably thanks to the mutual support, financial security and companionship marriage can provide.

But new research has produced some rather reassuring results for single people, and has found that outcomes for them are much less bleak than they first appear.

Relationship
There’s no silver bullet [Photo: Pexels]

According to a new study published this month in the journal Social Science Quarterly, while married women are healthier than single people if their relationship has lasted ten years or more, the same doesn’t go for newer couples.

In fact, young married people aren’t any healthier than their single counterparts.

In other words, marriage’s magical life-giving powers are weakening as time passes.

Comparing married people born between 1955 and 1984 over three generations, researchers found that while older generations saw improved “overall health” with marriage, “the effect has deteriorated over time.”

Woman holding flower
Is it because cultural attitudes are changing? [Photo: Pexels]

“This effect was completely attenuated among women in the youngest birth cohort,” wrote the study’s author, Dmitry Tumin, a sociology researcher at the Ohio State University.

“The modest benefit of marriage for women’s subjective health has eroded in recent cohorts,” he concluded.

So there you go. While your mum might sing the praises of tying the knot for what it’s done for her health, the same might not apply to you.

So no more fretting.

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