Lower life satisfaction among divorced people can lead to lower physical activity and increased smoking — two factors associated with early death, a new research has revealed.
Divorced participants were more likely than married participants to smoke and, as a result, had poorer lung function, which predicted early mortality, the study found. “We were trying to fill in the gap of evidence linking marital status and early mortality,” said lead author Kyle Bourassa from University of Arizona in the U.S.
The findings are based on data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, a long-term study of adults over age 50 living in Great Britain. The study includes seven waves of data, collected from participants every two years beginning in 2002.
The study, published in the journal Annals of Behavioral Medicine , included data from 5,786 participants out of which 926 people were divorced, separated or had not remarried. The rest of the sample group comprised of married participants.
The participants self reported their life satisfaction, exercise frequency and smoking status. Their lung function and levels of inflammation was also examined.
After tracking the deaths among the participants during the study, the researchers found that divorced or separated population had a 46% greater risk of dying than their still-married counterparts. The results also showed that divorced or separated women participants had further lower life satisfaction than married participants.
