7.Married

Married adults live longer and have fewer mentaland emotional problems than single adults. In fact, a ten-year study of tenthousand people in the United Kingdom found that living alone might shaveseveral years off a single person's life. The findings, published in theJournal of Health Economics, show that long-term singles are at risk of mentalillness and depression and of becoming sicker earlier. In The Case forMarriage, Gallagher and Waite sum up their research, "Being unmarried canactually be a greater risk to one's life than having heart disease orcancer" and "marital status was one of the most important predictorsof happiness."

Dr. Waitealso found that "marriage changes people's behavior in ways that make thembetter off." Married partners monitor each

other's health, for example. They drink lessalcohol and use less marijuana and cocaine. From detailed reports on fiftythousand men and women followed from their senior year in high school to theage of thirty-two by University of Michigan researchers, Dr. Waite discerned asteep increase in "bad behaviors" among those who stayed single, buta "precipitous drop" in bad behaviors like the use of alcohol orillegal drugs among those who married.

Drawing heavily on a study of thirteenthousand adults assessed in 1987 and 1988 and again in 1992 and 1993, Dr. Waitedemonstrated the positive impact that marriage has on mental health. The study,conducted by two psychologists at the University of Wisconsin, Nadine F. Marksand James D. Lambert, and published in The Journal of Family Issues, states itis not just that people who remained married reported significantly higher levelsof happiness than those who remained single." The data showed that thosewho separated or divorced over the five-year period became, in Dr. Waite'sword, miserable.

In 1998, the Universityof Chicago's Dr. Waite presented herfindings at the second annua] Smart Marriages Conference in Washington. Countering conventional wisdomthat marriage is bad for women but good for men. Dr. Waite found that marriagebrings considerable benefits to both women and men. It lengthens life andsubstantially boosts physical and emotional health. In a large national sampleof adults followed for eighteen years beginning at the age of forty-eight,slightly more than 60 percent of divorced and never-married women made it tosixty-five, as opposed to nearly 90 percent of married women. Widowed women,for reasons not entirely clear, fared almost as well as married women. Amongmen, however, those unmarried for any reasonwhether widowed, divorced, ornever married-had only a 60 to 70 percent chance of living to sixty-five,versus 90 percent for married men.

Dr. Waite further proved her case in The Casefor Marriage, written with Maggie Gallagher in 2000. Waite and Gallagheraddress what they term the five myths of marriage, including "Marriage ismostly about children" and "Divorce is usually the best answer forkids when a marriage becomes unhappy."

The book is based on eighteen years ofresearch by Waite: Gallagher is director of the Marriage Program at theInstitute for American Values. "Marriage is not just a label or a piece ofpaper, marriage is a creative act," Gallagher told the Washington Post inan interview. "When people invest in a marriage, it changes the way theylook at the world and act-they're more willing to invest in their futuretogether - and it also changes the way people look at you. You do get specialstatus."