Educated wives can mean a longer life for men - study

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - Men wanting to enjoy a long life should marry a well educated woman, according to a Swedish study.

Researchers from the Swedish Institute for Social Research in Stockholm found that a woman's education was a stronger factor in her husband's risk of dying over the next decade or so than the man's own level of education.

But a husband's social class based on his occupation had a greater influence on a woman's survival than her own occupational class, according to researchers Robert Erikson and Jenny Torssander.

"Women traditionally take more responsibility for the home than men do, and, as a consequence, women's education might be more important for the family's lifestyle -- for example, in terms of food habits -- than men's education," said the researchers.

"We can assume that more highly educated women have better possibilities to find the important health messages that are around ... There are lots of health messages in the media and I think some of them are important and some are just misleading."

Erikson told Reuters Health that living with a partner is known to reduce a person's risk of dying early and the current study suggests that one's choice of life partner may be an important part of the equation.

He said the effect of a partner's social status is multi-dimensional, with education, income, occupation and status each having an independent effect.

Erikson and Torssander's study, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, looked at 1990 census data on more than 1.5 million employed men and women, aged 30 to 59, who were living with a partner, along with cause of death data for the period 1991 to 2003.

As expected, for both men and women mortality was higher for less educated people and for those who made less money, while lower social status and working in a lower-level occupation were also tied to a greater risk of death.