Do you have that special someone, but haven’t yet “popped the question” and asked them to marry you – for whatever reason?
In this season of love, also known as Valentine’s Day, it is nice to be reminded that the benefits of sharing the depths of oneself with another actually leads not only to longer life, but also a more prosperous one as well, especially for men. How wonderful is it, also, to be in love and know that your significant other should live longer and make more money over their lifetime because of you.
A major US study of more than 120,000 Americans published by Harvard Medical School found that married men live longer than their non-married, divorced or widowed counterparts. According to Japanese scientists, never-married men are more likely to die from cardiovascular disease than married men by a factor of 300% — and another study found that married men had a 46% lower rate of death than unmarried men.
The University of Miami studied over 140,000 cases of prostate cancer and found that married men survived an average of nearly three years longer than widowed or separated men, with UCLA and Harvard discovering similar results for married bladder cancer survivors.
Even more studies have found that the more educated a man’s wife, the more he lowers his risk for coronary artery disease, high cholesterol, and hypertension, among others, and men who are married to more educated women have a lower death rate, comparatively, than men married to less educated women.
Studies on whether same sex marriage produces the same benefits are currently lacking.
So, married men live more healthily and longer, but what about the financial benefits to marriage, besides the economies of scale that come from sharing one household? Well, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, reporting in September of 2018, married men with at least a high school diploma, earn more than single men at every age from age 20 to 64.
The St. Louis Fed reported that, at age 30, married men make over $13,000 more per year than single men the same age, and at age 45, they make over $35,000 more per year than single men the same age. (The study also found that the gender gap still very much exists with married men making more than married and single women.) One study found that married participants saved an average of 48% more towards retirement than singles.
To sum it up, according to the data, married men live longer, live healthier, earn more their whole lives and build more for retirement than their single counterparts. The studies show benefits to married women are not as pronounced as men, although they are noted. While love is and will always be a matter of the heart, there are some definitive and quantitative advantages that are hard to ignore. Not one to be pragmatic on such an ethereal matter, but if I were still single, I might be asking myself, ‘I wonder whose life I am going to extend and whose earning potential I am going to supercharge?’ – we women power it all… no surprise there. So if your significant other is pressuring you to put a ring on it – he or she may be doing you a favor. Wishing much love, health and earnings is found on this Valentine’s Day.
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