Scientists found that men who never married were about two years older biologically than married men, but women who never married showed no such gap
Married people tend to live longer, and for decades studies have hinted that men get more out of marriage than women do. Researchers at Chapman University and UCLA went looking for that gap in DNA itself. They took blood samples from 762 American adults, most of them in midlife, and ran them through three epigenetic clocks, tools that estimate how fast the body is aging from chemical marks on the genome. One group stood out.
Men who had never married were biologically older than married men of the same age. On GrimAge, a clock built to predict lifespan, they came out about 1.9 years older. On DunedinPACE, which measures how fast someone is aging right now, they were aging about 5% faster, roughly 18 extra days of biological aging for every calendar year.
Women who had never married showed no such gap. Their epigenetic age looked much the same as that of married women. When it comes to marriage and aging, the link in this sample ran through men only.
That fits a pattern researchers have seen for decades. Married people have lower rates of heart disease, stroke and early death, and many studies find that men benefit more than women. A 2023 study of older Americans found that married people also look younger on epigenetic clocks, and a 2025 study found that never marrying was tied to older GrimAge in men, while for women the risk showed up after being widowed.
Not every study agrees. Another analysis of older adults found no clear difference between men and women, and the authors note that most earlier work split men and women into separate analyses instead of testing the gender gap directly. The new study ran that formal test.
The data come from the Midlife in the United States study, a national survey that began in 1994. Participants spent a night at a research clinic, where their blood was drawn. Years later, in 2022, labs extracted DNA from those stored samples and calculated each person’s epigenetic age.
The analysis took into account age, education, race and ethnicity, body mass index, smoking, and which wave of the study each person came from. The opening line of the paper is a quote from Mark Twain: to get the full value of joy, you must have someone to divide it with.
There was a second, smaller finding. People who were separated or divorced, men and women alike, were aging slightly faster on DunedinPACE than people who were married. That echoes earlier research we covered on toxic relationships and cellular age.
The researchers write that never marrying “carried epigenetic risk, but only for men in this sample.”
Their explanation centers on what marriage asks of each partner. Women still do more of the housework, child care and care for sick spouses, and earlier research shows marital conflict takes a bigger toll on women’s health. For many women, marriage brings strain along with support. For many men, it brings mostly support.
“Having a supportive marital partner likely contributes to psychological wellbeing, and not having a supportive partner may be particularly risky for men,” the researchers write.
Habits may play a part too. In this sample, 5% of married men smoked, compared with 16% of unmarried men, which fits the idea that partners nudge each other toward healthier choices. Men also tend to gain more happiness from new relationships than women do, according to an earlier study.
The link between marriage and aging does not mean a wedding will slow anyone down. If you are a man living alone, the more useful reading is about what marriage tends to supply: support, someone who notices when you are unwell, and a reason to quit smoking. Friends and family can provide much of that too.
There are limits to what this shows. Each person gave a single blood sample, so the study captures one moment and cannot show that marriage itself slows aging. Men who are already in poorer health may simply be less likely to marry.
The group of never-married men was small, about 50 people, and most participants were white. Widowed people were left out because there were too few of them, and the survey did not record whether couples were same-sex. A third clock, PhenoAge, showed no link with marital status at all. Men and women also age differently at the cellular level for reasons that have nothing to do with marriage, so this is one piece of a larger puzzle.
The study received no specific funding. The Midlife in the United States study is supported by the National Institute on Aging and the MacArthur Foundation. The authors reported no conflicts of interest.
Source
Moran TO, Kushner AM, Robles TF, Robinette JW. “Gender differences in the association between marriage and epigenetic age.” Frontiers in Aging, 2026.
DOI: 10.3389/fragi.2026.1931190
Also cited
Rentscher KE, Klopack ET, Crimmins EM, et al. “Social relationships and epigenetic aging in older adulthood: results from the Health and Retirement Study.” Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, 2023.
DOI: 10.1016/j.bbi.2023.09.001
Cui X, Huo J, Xu Y, et al. “Association of marital status with DNA methylation-based biological age among US older adults.” Frontiers in Public Health, 2025.
DOI: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1535524
