ColbyCosh.com

marriage has a myriad of core mental and physical health benefits for men in particular. One U.S. study found that nine out of ten married men alive at age 48 would still be alive at 65, but that of ten single men, only six would live to see their first pension cheque. The suicide rate among married men is about half that of never-marrieds and one-third that of divorcés. A new Japanese study tracked nearly 100,000 people aged 40-79 for ten years and found that never-married men were, quite simply, twice as likely to be dead at the end of the decade. On the whole, the evidence suggests that being single is probably worse for a man’s life expectancy than moderate cigarette smoking.

The StatsCan study seems to have done this, but I wonder if these other studies have corrected for any tendencies for mentally well-adjusted men to get married in the first place.

I've noticed a striking tendency among the wide circle of men I know, for the well-adjusted ones to get married. It does not hold true in all cases (the sanest, most loyal man I know is a bachelor, but that's likely only because he is unattractive) but I find it remarkably consistent.

Tybalt, that's a terrible thing to say about Colby!

Esteemed Mr. Cosh: hang in there. I'm sure you'll meet a nice girl someday. Or die trying.

Speaking of meeting nice girls, the world Diplomacy championship is in Vancouver this August.

See http://www.diplom.org/~seattle/wdc/

So now you have a conundrum. Do you limit he freedom of women to benefit men? On whose back should the mental health of men rest? A move away from no-fault divorce would clearly force women to stay in marriages that make them unhappy because it is better for men.

A move away from no-fault divorce would clearly force women to stay in marriages that make them unhappy because it is better for men.

But this bears the question of "is it healthier to be divorced or to be stuck in an unhealthy marriage"? Intuitively, I'd say the former (caveat: I'm happily single), but this seems like the kind of thing it might be hard to test for.

"is it healthier to be divorced or to be stuck in an unhealthy marriage"

From CC's stats it would seem that the answer is different depending on your gender. Divorce would seem to pose significantly less of a health risk to women. So my original question still holds. Do you force women to stay in unhappy marriages so that men's health outcomes improve.

So now you have a conundrum. Do you limit he freedom of women to benefit men?

I'm not sure anything nearly so drastic is needed. When was the last time we had a good strong public health campaign encouraging men to settle down and get married? Even encouraging commitment or fidelity within marriage? I have to think that a very large number of divorces are triggered because a partner is unfaithful - if you can find a way encourage fidelity, you'll find a way to discourage divorce.

Just encouraging marriage counselling alone would probably reduce the divorce rate. If you're looking for something radical, why couldn't marriage counselling be covered by provincial health plans, for example? I'm unashamed to say I've benefitted from it a great deal, but thankfully my employer footed the bill through an employee assistance program.

I could design you a pretty killer ad campaign just using the figures presented here, and it's not even my field.

But this bears the question of "is it healthier to be divorced or to be stuck in an unhealthy marriage"?

Neither - but I bet it's healthier to put some effort into making your marriage work. Marriage don't come easy; even the best marriages take some work. Support that work and you lower the divorce rate.

That doesn't even touch on the public health benefits to children of lowering divorce rates.

Speaking of meeting nice girls, the world Diplomacy championship is in Vancouver this August.

When looking for the woman of your dreams, remember to drive a hard bargain.

This would be a fine editorial if it did not contain a logical fallacy in the first sentence. The data indicates that the breakup of a marriage IS FOLLOWED BY a disproportionate risk of depression for men. We cannot conclude that the breakup CREATES the risk of depression. Consider the scenario in which a husband becomes depressed while married, then drives his wife nuts with his sloth, irresponsibility, abuse, etc. This scenario ends in divorce and adds one to the loser column on the Stats Can scoreboard. Divorce didn't create his depression, his depression created his divorce.

The potential confounder you are proposing was specifically controlled for in the analysis (it's a longitudinal study), a fact explicitly mentioned in the column.
There may be (almost certainly is) something to the idea that people who are prone to depression are more likely a priori to get divorced, but if so their depression doesn't appear in the hard diagnostic criteria until later.

Longitudinal simply means the study made measurements over some longish period of time. As far as correcting for the presence of depression prior to divorce, it would be really difficult to do that because depression can develop between the last observation before the divorce and the divorce. How frequent were the observations?

"A move away from no-fault divorce would clearly force women to stay in marriages that make them unhappy because it is better for men."

The way I read the article, both women and men are more likely to be depressed after a divorce than people who don't get divorced. Divorced men are 3.3 times more likely to be bummed as compared to divorced women's 2.4 times as likely. That's not a huge difference.

Colby's probably right. Other studies, linking male income and marriage, strongly suggest that it is a productivity effect (something about marriage improives the lives of men), not a selection effect (only male dregs stay unmarried).

Specifically, divorce cuts the growth rate of male income, regardless of when the divorce occurs.

(To be conclusive, you would need a longitudinal study with panel data, which would remove fixed effects. I'm sure there been one done, somewhere)

As far as correcting for the presence of depression prior to divorce, it would be really difficult to do that because depression can develop between the last observation before the divorce and the divorce. How frequent were the observations?

They were taken every two years, but at both the "baseline" (the creation of a non-depressed group of married/cohabiting people) and the follow-up (comparison of the bustups with the still-married control group) respondents were asked only about incidents of depression within the last 12 months.

Thanks, Cosh. My wife is now CROWING about keeping me from eating that fifth mini-cupcake. "It's because I want you to live longer, honey. Now go do your yoga. And fix the goddamned roof."

I love marriage as much as the next guy, and it helps society, makes men more productive, and is a boon to children. I have the same fear as Law: that forcing people to stay married because it's good for them statistically is a lot more attractive than forcing them to stay married for moral reasons.

It's the same conundrum as mistreating prisoners in the name of fixing or curing them as opposed to mistreating them to punish them or because it's fun. You can justify a lot more invasiveness because you want to help.

Correlation is not causation. It could be that men who are in poor physical and mental health are less likely to marry, and are also less likely to live long, not necessarily that marriage makes them live longer.

Yes, but in the Statscan study, the groups being compared contained no never-marrieds.