People who never marry run a far greater risk of premature death compared with peers who tie the knot or get divorced, according to a study published on August 9 in a specialist journal.
University of California at Los Angeles experts looked at national census and death certification data involving almost 67,000 adult Americans between 1989 and 1997.
In 1989, nearly one in two of this cross-section of the adult population were married, and almost one in 10 were widowed. One in eight were divorced and three percent were separated.
Of the remainder, five percent were cohabiting and around one in five had never been married.
By 1997, old age and poor health were unsurprisingly the main causes of death, but the researchers also found a strong link between a surviving marriage and a longer life. After factoring out age and state of health, those who had been widowed were almost 40 percent likelier to die between 1989 and 1997 compared with counterparts whose marriage had survived.