Married couples are more likely to live to an old age than their divorced, widowed or un-married counterparts, a new US study claims.

Research published today in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health shows that people that never marry are almost two-thirds more likely to suffer from premature death, with single men more adversely affected than women.

By analysing census data involving 67,000 individuals between 1989 and 1997, scientists from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), found that in 1989 about half of respondents were married, two-fifths had either been divorced or widowed and 20 per cent were not married.

Although the researchers admit that by 1997 the greatest contributing factors towards mortality were old age and poor health, whether people were married or not had a significant impact on whether people were still alive, even after taking age, health and other factors into consideration.

US residents that had not married during the eight-year period were 58 per cent more likely to have died, whereas the increased risk of death for widowers and divorcees was revealed to be 40 per cent and 27 per cent respectively.

The UCLA research team say they were surprised by the fact that non-married people in good health were more likely to have died during 1989 and 1997 than less-healthy individuals.

The researchers explained that the unmarried group of people were found to generally be in better physical condition than their married peers, as well as drinking less alcohol and exercising more.

For men between the age of 19 and 44-years-old, the likelihood of death was almost double that of married men of the same age.

The authors of today's report suggest that marriage represents a "rough proxy for social connectedness", while not getting married may be strongly linked to "severe isolation".

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