A 20-year old study proves that happy marriages are associated with healthier spouses

A new study that examined 1,681 marriages over 20 years proves that happier marriages make for healthier spouses. Co-author Cody Hollist, a marriage and family therapy expert at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, says health and marital happiness go hand-in-hand, though it's not clear which comes first. “There is no way to tease out what caused what”, he said. “But it is clear that marital quality and health run in tandem”. Richard B. Miller of Brigham Young University was the study's lead author. Other co-authors included Joseph Olsen of Brigham Young University and David Law of Utah State. This study is published in the Journal of Marriage and Family. “We wanted to compare the health trajectory with the happiness trajectory”, Hollist said. “As health worsens, do their marriages stay stable? What we found is that there's a relationship between health and happiness for both age groups. If their health is good, their happiness is up”. “Our findings indicated no cohort differences between the younger and midlife cohorts which is consistent with the findings (of the previous researchers), who also found no differences between their 30-year-old and their 50-year-old cohorts”.