Single people showed an elevated risk for heart disease and cancer, for infectious diseases such as pneumonia and influenza, and for such life-habit-related conditions as cirrhosis of the liver and lung disease. Tellingly, the degree of protection offered by married status was five times as great for men as for women, a finding that speaks to the relative roles of the genders in this culture, with profound implications for health—a topic I will circle back to in chapter 23. Interestingly, “unhappily married persons are worse off in well-being than unmarried persons.”[7]
