Impact of marital status on health

Abstract

The Farr-Bertillon law states that the mortality rate of single and widowed persons is about three times the rate of married people of same age. This excess mortality can be measured with good accuracy for all ages except for young widowers. The reason is that, at least nowadays, very few people become widowed under the age of 30. Here we show that disability data from census records can also be used as a reliable substitute for mortality rates. In fact excess-disability and excess-mortality go hand in hand. Moreover, as there are about ten times more cases of disability than deaths, the disability variable is able to offer more accurate measurements in all cases where the number of deaths is small. This allows a more accurate investigation of the young widower effect; it confirms that, as already suspected from death rate data, there is a huge spike between the ages of 20 and 30. By using disability rates we can also study additional features not accessible using death rate data. For example we can examine the health impact of a change in living place. The observed temporary inflated disability rate confirms what could be expected by invoking the "Transient Shock" conjecture formulated by the authors in a previous paper.