Being single a health hazard, says study

By ROGER DOBSON and ANDREW JOHNSON

Being single is as bad for you as smoking - or worse.

For the Bridget Jones generation of 30-something single women, a major study brings the worst possible news - that on top of the cigarettes, wine and anxiety about weight, the very state of being single takes years off your life.

The research, which monitored the lifestyles of 10,000 adults across Britain over 10 years, has found that, for both men and women, being single is as perilous to longevity as smoking.

The findings buck the trend of previous research which has tended to show that only single men were at risk.

The negative effects of being alone are thought to kick in when a person hits 30.

Just why being single is so unhealthy is not clear, the researchers say. But anyone who has read Bridget Jones's Diary - the second instalment of which will soon hit cinema screens - will have a clue.

Much like Bridget Jones, who defined the anxieties of a female generation, it is thought single people tend to follow less healthy lifestyles.

They drink more because they socialise more with large groups of friends; they skip meals such as breakfast, and work harder because there is no partner to make time for.

And they do not have an emotional confidant to share problems with.

Married couples, on the other hand, tend to have better diets and more comfortable homes.

Children within a marriage are also thought to have a stabilising effect on the parents, whereas single people are likely to take more risks.

Professor Andrew Oswald, who led the research, said: "Marriage keeps you alive and the effect is remarkably large. The excess mortality for the unmarried is similar to that of a smoker."

In the study, the researchers, whose work will be published in The Journal of Health Economics, used a database of 10,000 adults in their 40s, who had been monitored over the last decade and interviewed each year.

Six hundred people died during the course of the study, and researchers looked at the different mortality rates of men and women who were married, single, divorced and widowed to see if there were any differences in the risk of death over an eight-year period.

The researchers found that men who had never married or who were separated or divorced at the start of the research were 10 per cent more likely to die during the following eight years.

Women who were single, separated or divorced at the start of the study had a 4.8 per cent greater risk of dying.

That compares with the 5 per cent extra risk of dying faced by smokers.

The agony aunt Claire Rayner, who has been with her husband for 47 years, said: "If you are married you have a partner who shores up your self-esteem. They think you are made of the stuff of magic and worry about you if you are late home.

"If your self-esteem is high you take more of an interest in yourself, so you take more care of yourself. You have a sense of responsibility to yourself and your partner.

"If you have children, even if they are grown, you still feel a responsibility for them - especially if you are a woman."

Virginia Ironside, the Independent's agony aunt, observed: "I think it's unhappiness that makes people die early. Some people when they are single are not happy and if you are unhappy, perhaps you don't fear dying as much as if you are full of beans.

"But if you are a single person with lots of good friends and you feel comfortable, then that's a very happy state to be in."


- INDEPENDENT