It doesn’t pay to be a woman.
At least that’s the conclusion I come to after reading articles for this week’s and last week’s Science of Sex blog posts. First, last week’s look at 50 years of the pill brought up all the hazards women have to deal with when it comes to managing their fertility. Now this week I read that older women married to younger men are more likely to die sooner than older men who are married to younger women.
In other words, being a Cougar comes at a price while being a Sugar Daddy comes with benefits.
Apparently, the Max Planck Institute, a German research organization, analyzed the marriage and death records of two million Danish men and women and found that when a woman married a man seven to nine years younger, she was 20 percent more likely to die prematurely than a woman married to a man her own age. And should a woman marry someone more than 15 years younger, that risk jumped to more than 30 percent.
In contrast, a man who married a woman seven to nine years younger was eleven percent LESS likely to die at any point.
Of course, the real kicker here was that evidence was found that women marrying significantly older men also tend to die prematurely. The best thing for women to do, says Sven Drefahl of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Germany, is to “marry a man of exactly the same age.”
And then pray that he doesn’t dump you for a younger model, right?
Here are some articles on the subject. Take a look at the first one especially, as it comes straight from the Max Planck Institute.
Marriage and life expectancy – Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research