Marriage makes men live longer, new study finds

Married men were less likely to die from heart failure as they had someone close to them keeping tabs on their health, the University of Colorado study finds

The study found that married men were less likely to die as they had someone close to them keeping tabs on their health, whilst bachelors typically did not. (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Bachelors are twice as likely than their married male counterparts to die from heart failure, a new study has found.

The research – conducted by the University of Colorado - compiled data from 6800 American adults, comparing survival rates for heart failure with marital status. The results? Married men were less likely to die as they had someone close to them keeping tabs on their health, whilst bachelors typically did not.

Bachelors remained the cohort at greater risk of death, with men who had previously been married and had either been widowed, divorced or separated still impacted by the protective impact of marriage.

However, the study did not identify this trend amongst married women, who are interpreted by experts as being more capable of looking after their health than their male counterparts. Here, there was no link between marital status and death from heart failure.

In the UK, the prevalence of heart failure slowly increases with age, accelerating more rapidly after the age of 65. British Heart Foundation reports that heart and circulatory diseases cause a quarter of all deaths in the UK, with more than 160,000 deaths each year.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence estimates that 1 in 35 people between 65 and 74 years of age are impacted, compared to 1 in 15 people between 75 and 84 years of age. Over the age of 85, this statistic is just 1 in 7.

As such, The University of Colorado study advised doctors to check marital status when treating patients with heart failure. Dr Katarina Leyba, the study’s lead author, said: “Lifelong bachelor status is a significant predictor of death in men but not women.

“As clinicians, we need to think about our patients not just in terms of their medical risk factors, but also the context of their life. There is a relationship between a person’s relationship status and their clinical prognosis with heart failure”, Dr Leyba added.

Elsewhere, in analysing data from 199 countries across a 200-year period, one August 2022 study concluded that men are more likely to outlive women if they marry and go to university.

Though historically, research has found that women have longer survival rates and lower death rates than men, this study found that men who had completed higher education and got married were likely to live longer than women who had not.

In 2019, the average difference in life expectancy was 4.4 years worldwide.