Mortality by cause of death and marital status in Spain

A number of studies have shown an association between maritalstatus and mortality, with most of them finding a lower mortalityin married as compared to unmarried persons. The purpose ofthis study is to show the differences in mortality from theleading causes of death by marital status among men and womenin Spain. An analysis was made of persons aged 25 years andolder who died in Spain during 1991. The mortality differencesby marital status and sex were analysed for all the deaths andfor the most frequent causes of death, using the ratios of age-adjusteddeath rates calculated from Poisson log—linear models.For both men and women, mortality was always higher in singleand widowed persons than in married persons, except for a non-statisticallysignificant mortality from diabetes mellitus and cirrhosis ofthe liver in single women. Divorced and separated men had ahigher mortality than married men for all the causes of deathtaken together; the mortality among divorced and separated women,on the other hand, was lower than in married women. Divorcedand separated men and women generally had a lower mortalitythan married persons for the different causes of death, exceptfor traffic accidents, suicide, cirrhosis of the liver and HIVinfection, where it was higher. The results obtained are similarto the findings of most studies in other countries, in whicha lower mortality has been observed in married persons as comparedto those who are widowed or single. However, the data showingthat divorced and separated persons have a lower mortality fromsome causes of death than married persons stand in contrastto most published studies. This work has shown that unmarriedpersons are not a homogeneous group, in that divorced and separatedpersons are very different from those who are single or widowed.