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Despite a substantial increase in the prevalence and social acceptability of cohabitation, new research finds that suicide is still significantly less common among persons who are legally married. Studies as far back as 1881 have observed a negative correlation between being married and likelihood of suicide. Even though the marriage rate has declined in recent decades, that correlation continues to hold true.
From the news story in today’s Daily Mail:
Single and cohabiting women are increasingly much more likely to commit suicide than married women, a Whitehall report showed yesterday.
It found that those who do not marry were killing themselves at three times the rate of wives.
This is a much higher rate than 25 years ago, when single women were twice as likely to commit suicide as those who were married.
The findings, in a study by the Government's Office for National Statistics, suggest that cohabitation has made a high proportion of young women more vulnerable to depression.
They undermine Labour's dogma that all family relationships are equally good.
The Daily Mail report focuses on suicide among women, but the full study from the Office for National Statistics documents similar findings for men.
[A]s presented in earlier articles, suicide rates among married people are lower than for unmarried people for both sexes and in every age group. For single and divorced men aged 25 and over, suicide rates were around three times higher than for married men throughout 1983 to 2004. This was also the case for divorced women, but for single women aged 25 and over the differentials increased over time, to around three times by 2004.
It has been suggested that marriage offers protection against suicide because married persons are said to have access to greater social support than unmarried persons. The new findings tend to controvert that hypothesis, however. Cohabitation has tripled since 1979, and today about one-quarter of single Britons are cohabiting; yet, with only marginal exceptions, the divergence between suicide rates of married and unmarried has not narrowed.
Despite an overall reduction in suicide rates, there has been no narrowing of the gap in suicide rates between those who are married and those who are single or divorced. Rates for single and divorced men and divorced women were around three times higher than for married men and women throughout. For single women, the differential widened from just over two times to around three times between 1983 and 2004.
The full study, entitled “Trends in suicide by marital status in England and Wales, 1982-2005”, is found in the ONS publication, Health Statistics Quarterly, Spring 2008, pp. 8-14.
h/t: MarriageDebate.com
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