What Does The Britsh Government Study Say?

I recently paged through an issue of Weekly World News while waiting in the grocery check out lane. After finding an article on women who marry younger men, I bought a copy for curiosity sake. While I do not agree with the report as being an accurate portrayal for the United States, I thought it may be of interest. My comments regarding this article are at the end of the articles content.

Article author, Arthur Berman, sites the latest statistics compiled by Lak Bulusu, statistician for the British government. Bulusu's study appeared in England's prestigious Journal of Biosocial Science.

According to Lak Bulusu, women in their 50's or 60's who are married to men 10 to 15 years younger, have a significantly higher mortality rate and the same applies to men. Women 55 to 64 married to younger men have a death rate nearly double that of women the same age whose husbands are roughly equal to them in years.

Bulusu's study included all 599,000 deaths of married men and married women in England and Wales from 1990 to 1992.

He found that it is not as dangerous for men to marry younger women provided the age gap is 15 years or less. Once the difference is greater, the death rate soars for both partners. The healthiest marriages are those where the partners are about the same age.

While Bulusu does admit there is no comparable study done in the United States, he says the same holds true there as well. I find that rather assuming considering he has no factual account to back up his biased statement of comparison.

Dr. Fred Humphrey, past president of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, says the partners must often deal with the stress of ostracism from their family or friends for bucking society's norm. "They have chosen to do something that is contrary to what most people do", explains Dr. Humphrey. "As soon as people do something that marks them as deviant, they will lack a lot of the usual support systems, such as people being friendly to them or willing to help them. They may find themselves with a lot less support from friends, neighbors and family because they're going to be labeled as somehow weird or odd."

As we all know England is a far cry from the United States in most things. So I find a comparison to the US without ample facts to back them up, rather ridiculous to say the least. I have found the exact opposite to be true in my own research on age gap relationship mortality rates. Women married to younger men live longer because their spouses keep the older women's mind sets younger. Older women are more active than if they were married to men their own age and in most cases don't appear to show their true age as rapidly either.

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