THE EFFECTS OF MARRIAGE ON LONGEVITY.

Dunstan Times, Issue 2479, 3 May 1909, Page 3

THE EFFECTS OF MARRIAGE ON LONGEVITY.

Tuts subject has of ate years evoked b; little attention, though it is one of the mo; interesting problem;; of vital statistics. Th effect of widowhood on the rate of female mortality is peculiar. Between the ages o twCnty-five and thirty the death-rate amon . widows is something like seventeen pe: thousand, as against, nine deaths per thousan * among spinsters and wives of these ages. But in France, and more particularly in Paris, this high mortality soon diminishes and after forty-five it is not greater than umaids of the same age. Aland after i 1 ’ age it is the mothers who have the lo death-rate. " The calculation ol p

bilities," says M. Bertillion, " shows u the man who marries between twenty

twenty-five years, has yet a mean ot . years to live in place of thirty-five ye; and that the girl who manies at the s<t ■ age has forty years to hope for in place thirty-six, which she would have lived unmarried—the one adding five years to his existence, and the other four years to her*." The influence that marriage exerts in relation to crime must not be lost sight of. The criminality of widowers, and especially 3f widows, has been found to be largely in axcess of that of the married, and for every yne hundred unmarried criminals, there are only forty-nine married as regards crimes lommitted against the person, and about forty-five for crimes against property, besides this, while crime has diminished 'ready during the last forty years, it is in he class of married criminals that the irgest diminution is discovered. Whatever marriage may be for the intividual, it is clearty not a failure so far as tie State is concerned. The number of .oicides among celibates and the widowed s mere than double that which takes place .r.iongthe married. Insanity and nervous diseases generally ippear to effect the married in a still less proportion. There are a great many more vidows than widowers in Great Britain, >,nd the difference in numbers between the wo classes is greatest in the large seaport towns and mining districts. Among the reasons to which this is ascribed are the greater hardships and increased risks to which the men are exposed ax*d their greater ptenuwaoce. - -