THE EFFECTS OF MARRIAGE ON LONGEVITY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume III, Issue III, 30 July 1891, Page 4

THE EFFECTS OF MARRIAGE ON LONGEVITY.

This subject has of ate years evoked but little attention, though it is one ofthe most interesting problems of vital statistics. The effect of widowhood on the rate of female mortality is peculiar. Between the ages of twenty-five and thirty the death-rate among uidows is something like seventeen per thousand, as against nine deaths per thousand 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 in maids of the same age. At and after this .-i.-c it is the mothers who have the lowest death-rate. "The calculation of probabilities," says M. Bertillion, "shows us that the man who marries between twenty and twenty-five years, has yet a mean ot forty years to live in place of thirty-five years; aud that the girl who marries at the same age has forty years to hope for in place of thirty-six, which she would have lived unmarried — the one adding five years to his existence, and the other four years to hers." The influence that marriage exerts in relation to crime must not be lost sight of. 'i he criminality of widowers, and especially of widows, has been found to be largely in c -cess of that of the married, and for every one hundred unmarried criminals, there are only forty-nine married as regards crimes committed against the person, anJ about 'nrty-five for crimes against property, {'■asides this, while crime has diminished iieatly during the last forty years, it is in '•ie class of married criminals that the largest diminution is discovered. Whatever marriage may be for the iul.vidual, it is clearty not a failure so far as liie State is concerned. The number of s licides among celibates and the widowed .s more than double that which takes place cnonglhe married. Insanity and nervous diseases generally i|>p>ear to effect the married in a still less proportion. There are a great many more .idows than widowers in Great Britain, .-..vi the difference in numbers between the t .vo classes is greatest, in the large seaport to vns and mining districts. Among the reasons to which this is ascribed are the ■-renter hardships and increased risks to -which the men are exposed aul their greater Intemperance,