Sunday, February 26, 2006

The stress of marriage shortens combined life by aprox a year


New research reveals that while wedlock helps men to live longer, it shortens a woman's life by more than a year. Marriage helps husbands to an extra 1.7 years, but it knocks 1.4 years off the average wife's lifespan, according to the study of more than 100,000 people across Europe.

The stress of leading dual roles as working women and homekeepers is thought to be tne of the key elements that is killing off female spouses earlier than their single sisters. Another factor revealed by the research team of Professor Stefan Felder of Magdeburg University, Germany, is a tendency for women to ape the behaviour of their spouse. Their findings came as the Office of National Statistics released figures showing that life expectancy rose by 5.1 years for British men between 1981 and 2002 but by just 3.7 years for women. http://www.med.uni-magdeburg.de/fme/institute/ism/Gesoek/gesund.htm