This raises so many questions.<p>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?<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
I'm not the best with numbers, but the subtitle of the linked article says that "Unmarried people are at least 50% less likely to experience cognitive decline." That's a bit different than saying that the "Study shows marriage increases your odds of dementia by 50%" — both numerically and causally, no?
Could there be a link to having children causing sleep deprivation for a few years as well as catching plenty of additional contagious diseases during infancy? (colds, flu...)
Given the links between dementia and infectious disease and the microbiome, I wonder if the real explanation could just be that unmarried people have less exposure to infection vectors(since living with another person working elsewhere essentially doubles it), or less contact with children who get sick a lot.
I agree with the flagged comment that there might be other traits people that are single or choose to be have, than those that feel driven to marriage or susceptible to the pressure of doing it<p>It does take a level of impressionability to agree to that kind of contract with those terms, which could already be considered a cognitive decline
I wonder if it related to those studies showing couples have more of a shared memory, to manage tasks better. When playing memory games they tend to do much better than two strangers placed on a team.<p>What if this leads to less of a cognitive workout over time vs having to manage everything yourself which increases dementia risk?