Further, in the last two years several large studies that tracked people in and out of relationships over a long period have produced evidence that marriage actually causes psychological well-being in both sexes. By contrast, Dr. Bernard's material consisted of one-time glimpses of people's lives. While both Dr. Bernard and Dr. Waite based their conclusions on data from many studies, reducing the likelihood that either was reporting a fluke, marriage itself has changed in the intervening years in ways that generally make women happier. In a large national sample of adults followed for 18 years beginning at the age of 48, slightly more than 60 percent of divorced and never-married women made it to 65, as opposed to nearly 90 percent of married women. Widowed women, for reasons not entirely clear, fared almost as well as married women.
Married partners monitor each other's health, for example.
They also drink less alcohol and use less marijuana and cocaine. Drawing heavily on a study of 13,000 adults assessed in 1987 and 1988 and again in 1992 and 1993, Dr. Waite demonstrated the positive impact that marriage has on mental health. The study, conducted by two psychologists at the University of Wisconsin, Nadine F. Marks and James D. Lambert, will be published in November in The Journal of Family Issues. It is not just that people who remained married reported significantly higher levels of happiness than those who remained single. The data showed that those who separated or divorced over the five-year period became, in Dr. Waite's word, miserable.