Healthy, Wealthy and Wise

Marriage is Good for Us

Single Parenting is bad for Us

One of the strongest, most consistent benefits of marriage is better physical health and its consequence, longer life. Married people are less likely than unmarried people to suffer from long-term illness or disability (Murphy et al. 1997), and they have better survival rates for some illnesses (Goodwin et al. 1987). They have fewer physical problems and a lower risk of death from various causes, especially those with a behavioral component; the health benefits are generally larger for men (Ross et al. 1990). A longitudinal analysis based on data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, a large national sample, documents a significantly lower mortality rate for married individuals (Lillard and Waite 1995).

For example, simulations based on this research show that, other factors held constant, nine out of ten married women alive at age 48 would still be alive at age 65; by contrast, eight out of ten never-married women would survive to age 65.

The corresponding comparison for men reveals a more pronounced difference: nine out of ten for the married group versus only six out of ten for those who were never married (Waite and Gallagher 2000).

Similarly, although there are exceptions and the matter remains controversial (Sloan et al. 1999), a growing body of research documents an association between religious involvement and better outcomes on a variety of physical health measures, including problems related to heart disease, stroke, hypertension, cancer, gastrointestinal disease, as well as overall health status and life expectancy. This research also points to differences by religious affiliation, with members of stricter denominations displaying an advantage (Levin 1994).

A large body of literature documents that married men earn higher wages than their single counterparts. This differential, known as the "marriage premium," is sizable. A rigorous and thorough statistical analysis by Korenman and Neumark (1991) reports that married white men in America earn 11 percent more than their never-married counterparts, controlling for all the standard human capital variables.

Children raised by their own married parents do better, on average, across a range of outcomes than children who grow up in other living arrangements. There is evidence that the former are less likely to die as infants (Bennett et al. 1994) and have better health during childhood (Angel and Worobey 1988) and even in old age (Tucker et al. 1997). They are less likely to drop out of high school, they complete more years of schooling, they are less likely to be idle as young adults, and they are less likely to have a child as an unmarried teenager (McLanahan and Sandefur 1994).

Children who grow up in intact two-parent families also tend to have better mental health than their counterparts who have experienced a parental divorce. Using 17-year longitudinal data from two generations, Amato and Sobolewski (2001) find that the weaker parent-child bonds that result from marital discord mediate most of the association between divorce and the subsequent mental health outcomes of children. Cherlin et al. (1998) find that children whose parents would later divorce already showed evidence of more emotional problems prior to the divorce, suggesting that marriage dissolution tends to occur in families that are troubled to begin with. However, the authors also find that the gap continues to widen following the divorce, suggestive of a causal effect of family breakup on mental health.

The book Breaking Free has a lot of revealing research on the correlations between Childhood Loss and Trauma and later Adult Diseases, Addictions, Criminal Behavior, etc. We also include several soul stirring stories about adults who were healed from Adverse Childhood Events.

Be careful. This book may be too advanced for you to read and implement. Its healing properties are very powerful.