Having a happy spouse not only leads to a longer marriage, but may also be key to a longer life, a study claims. Meanwhile the study, published in the journal Psychological Science, shows that spousal life satisfaction was associated with mortality, and regardless of individuals' socioeconomic or physical health status.
Spouses' life satisfaction was an even better predictor of participants' mortality than participants' own life satisfaction. Participants who had a happy partner at the beginning of the study were less likely to pass away over the next 8 years compared with participants who had less happy partners.
The spouses of participants who died were also more likely to pass away within the 8-year observation period than were spouses of participants who were still living. The findings suggest that greater partner life satisfaction at the beginning of the study was associated with lower participant mortality risk. Specifically, the risk of mortality for participants with a happy spouse increased more slowly than mortality risk for participants with an unhappy spouse.
