Woman’s Education Influences Male Partner’s Lifespan

A woman’s education is a stronger factor in her male companion’s risk of dying over the next ten years, than the man’s own education level.  Robert Erikson, from Swedish Institute for Social Research (Stockholm, Sweden), and colleagues reviewed 1990 census data compiled on more than 1.5 million employed men and women, ages 30 to 59 years, who were living with a partner, and corresponding causes of death data for the years following. Men who lived with a woman without a high school education were 1.25-times more likely to die than men living with a college graduate.  As well, women married to unskilled manual and routine non-manual laborers were 1.25-times more likely to die, as compared to women whose male partners were employed in managerial and professional occupations.