Marriage is the foundation for a strong family, but it also provides for the best health - and wealth - of the partners, and their children, according to some interesting new research.
A recent study which looked at risk factors for vascular health by the American College of Cardiology revealed that married people have a lower risk of vascular disease affecting the abdomen, neck and legs. A well-kept secret is that marriage also yields many general benefits to your physical health. For decades researchers have consistently found that men and women in good marriages tend to do better in a number of health measures. From colds to the flu to major issues such as cancer and heart disease, healthy marriages appear to confer a protective effect. Happily married men and women also enjoy better mental health and tend to live longer than their never-married, divorced or cohabiting counterparts.
There is also incontrovertible evidence that marriage also increases wealth. A recent study by the Brookings Institute revealed that marriage provides a social mobility element to its members. Marriage partners tended to accumulate wealth better than single, divorced, widowed or cohabiting couples, and passed those trends on to their children. And the study found that this social mobility notion applied not just to those married folks in lower economic brackets, but middle class marrieds were impacted too. According to researcher Brad Wilcox in his latest study published by the American Enterprise Institute, that mobility is significantly lower with weaker family structures. Employers have long known, as outlined at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2070871, that hiring married people makes good business sense.
The health and happiness of married people bears out in these recent studies, and Focus on the Family has some great resources on keeping your marriage strong. Of course, let's be clear—although men and women in good marriages are more likely to do better in terms of health and wealth, there are no guarantees that a solid marital relationship will help ward off illness or extend a person's net worth. Still, a thriving marriage makes a tremendous difference in your quality of life in every way. Dietrich Bonheoffer said it best in a letter to his niece on her pending marriage: "It is not your love that sustains your marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love."
Marriage is something that we all think that will last forever. In most cases, it does. For the rest, it can end abruptly for one or the other. Like you said, those married who have some sort of wealth are happier. Sometimes that wealth can become a problem. If that were to happen, then you might need someone who knows family law to step in. http://www.harperfamilylaw.com.au
ReplyDeleteThese studies clearly illustrate that it is not good for the "man to be alone." For those who are not yet married, and desire to be, it is important to surround yourself with friends who share your values and who you know will love, support, and encourage you. And, likewise, it is equally important that you learn to encourage and care for those same friends who are in your life. We are created to be a part of a community…not living in isolation.
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