"Why Marriage Matters": Marriage leads to better overall health, scholar Linda Waite says

PROVO — There's a lot to be said for saying "I do."

And it goes beyond the romantic notions of happily ever after.

How about healthily, wealthily ever after?

Married people have higher levels of physical, emotional and cognitive health, along with greater earning potential, a sociologist told a group at BYU last week.

Linda Waite, a professor of sociology from the University of Chicago, provided hard data for the often emotionally fueled arguments in favor of traditional marriage at the sixth annual Marjorie Pay Hinckley Lecture.

"What I argue, and in my view, the research evidence supports, is that marriage itself changes people's choices," Waite said.

When their choices change, their behavior changes, which results in greater health.

"(Using the) most basic fundamental health indicator, it's very clear that married people are advantaged," she said, showing a graph with life-expectancy lines for men and women that were higher for married individuals than their single, widowed or divorced counterparts.

And this refers to traditional marriages, she said, not cohabitation, marriage-like arrangements or alternatives to marriage.

But being married doesn't just help you live longer. Other graphs showed higher levels of mental health and cognitive function for married couples than for single people living alone, with other adults or with their own children.

"It's clear that for both men and women, marriage improves mental health," Waite said. "And it declines when they lose a marriage."

In fact, divorce or widowhood is so stressful that "being divorced or widowed leaves a mark on physical health even years later," she said.

Although remarrying improves mental health, it can't make up for the damaging periods of poor sleep, nutrition and exercise during a stressful time, Waite said.

Marriage also benefits the parties financially, as women have someone to provide for them and their children, and men earn more money than they did when they were single, because of an improved work ethic.

Those findings are nothing new to BYU professors, who study social trends of marriage and family through the LDS lens.

"Obviously at BYU, there's a religious motivation behind the importance of marriage," said Renata Forste, a sociology professor who studied in Chicago, where she met Waite. "But there's also empirical evidence that shows that married people do better."

Lectures like Waite's build on the legacy of Sister Hinckley and her focus on the family through research and education, said Stephen Bahr, a professor of sociology at BYU who is on the Marjorie Pay Hinckley Advisory Committee responsible for arranging the lectures.