New research recently published in the journal International Social Work observing how marital status affects the aging of men and women reported a pattern of married men aging more slowly than those who were single, while for women, there was minimal difference present.
Mabel Ho, Eleanor Pullenayegum, David Burnes, and Esme Fuller-Thomson, the researchers behind the Canada-based study, said it examines the “sex-specific impact of marital trajectories among older adults on successful aging to help social workers identify those most at risk for sub-optimal outcomes who may benefit from targeted interventions.” They explained that they used binary logistic regression analyses to investigate 7641 Canadians who were classified as “aging successfully” in the baseline wave of the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging, which tracked the health and well-being of adults aged 45 to 85 over a period of 20 years.
According to their findings, men who were continuously married, continuously widowed, or got married between the waves were more probable to age “successfully” as opposed to their single counterparts, whereas for women, their marital trajectories reportedly played a modest role in their aging.
Of the 3926 male respondents, “significant positive associations” between marital status and successful aging were observed in respondents who were continuously married (aOR = 2.56, 95% CI = 1.53, 4.28), continuously widowed (aOR = 2.50, 95% CI = 1.22, 5.09), or became married since baseline (aOR = 3.83, 95% CI = 1.67, 8.77) when compared to their never-married peers.
As a contrast, there were no significant differences in regards to successful aging between never-married individuals and any of the other marital categories (i.e. continuously married, continuously widowed, continuously divorced or separated, became married since baseline, and other trajectories of marital status since baseline) for the 3715 female respondents. However, the authors reported one exception of the women who transitioned from married to not married between the waves having significantly lower odds of “successful aging” (aOR = 0.48, 95% CI = 0.28, 0.81).
According to another study recently published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, women were observed to be more content living on their own, as they were found to be less likely to want a significant other, and more sexually satisfied. The authors of the analysis suggested this is because women were more likely to report having supportive platonic relationships, and because they reported romantic relationships are less beneficial for them, as they’re more likely to take on a larger share of household and romantic duties while having their sexual pleasure undervalued.
Overall however, marriage in the US is reported to have jumped from 5.1 per 1,000 people in 2020 to 6.2 by 2022, the highest rate observed since 2018, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
