London: Marriage makes for a healthier life, especially during the pandemic. According to a new study, being an unmarried man relates to higher risk of dying from COVID-19.
Along with this, a man having a lower income, lower level of education and being born in low-or middle-income countries are other risk factors for succumbing to the disease, warned researchers from Stockholm University in Sweden.
The study is based on data from the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare on all registered deaths from COVID-19 in Sweden for adults aged 20 and older. The findings were published in the journal Nature Communications,
“We can show that there are independent effects of various separate risk factors that have been brought up in debates and news about COVID-19,” said study author Sven Drefahl.
“All of these factors are accordingly individually associated with a strongly elevated risk of dying from Covid-19,” he added, according to a report by news agency IANS.
According to the findings, unmarried men and women (including those never married, widows/widowers and divorced) had a 1.5-2 times as high risk of dying from COVID-19 as those who were married.
However, men had more than twice as high a risk of dying from COVID-19 than women, the study added.
A number of earlier studies have also shown that single and unmarried people have a higher mortality from various diseases. This is usually to some part explained by selection, meaning that people who have worse health from the beginning are less attractive on the partner market and therefore get married to a lesser degree.
“The explanation is also considered to be in singles having a less protected environment than those who live in a couple relationship. Accordingly, marriage can lead to a healthier life with a lower risk of disease than for the unmarried. This can also explain the elevated risk of dying from COVID-19 for unmarried individuals shown by our study,” said Drefahl.
