[dragonsky67]

This raises so many questions.

I'd be interested in how many people in the study from each group die off during the study... is there a larger number of people in the unmarried group dying off, thereby increasing the chance that the married group would age to the point where dementia is more likely?

The question about married people being more likely to be able to afford health care (via insurance) would seem to be a uniquely US issue... I'd be interested to see the health impact of marriage on different countries, different cultural groups etc.

Culture would seem to impact greatly on what marriage entails... many groups appear to have a strong link between marriage and cultural activities, others it allows the couple to be a self contained social group, removing the link to external socialisation.

The 50% figure seems to be pretty strong, but at least from the article it is hard to draw too many conclusions without knowing how wide the sample set of participants are.