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Social Policy

Marriage Good For Women Too

Ever since a study published in 1972 claimed that married women were subject to greater psychological distress than unmarried women, there has been a popular notion that marriage is good for men but bad for women. But a University of Chicago researcher says she has found that marriage brings considerable benefits to both women and men. Dr. Linda J. Waite, a professor of sociology, says that marriage lengthens life, substantially boosts physical and emotional health and raises income. In a large national sample, it was found that slightly more than 60 percent of divorced or never-married women lived to age 65 -- compared to 90 percent of married women. Another study demonstrated that men and especially women who married for the first time experienced a sharp increase in happiness -- which was only moderately replicated in a second marriage. Waite found that married people have more than twice as much money, on average, as unmarried people. Moderate domestic violence occurred half as often among married couples and cohabiting couples engaged to be married as it did with cohabiting couples not planning to marry. Experts caution that these findings represent population-based averages. They do not mean that everyone is better off married than single, or that people are bound to be happy and healthy even if they marry the wrong person. Source: Hara Estroff Marano, "Debunking the Marriage Myth: It Works for Women, Too," New York Times, August 4, 1998.

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