As the number of unmarried people in the U.S. rises, new research suggests that people who are married are likely to live longer with cancer than their unmarried counterparts.

The research team — led by Scarlett Lin Gomez, Ph.D., from the Cancer Prevention Institute of California and Maria Elena Martinez, Ph.D., from the UC San Diego School of Medicine — looked at the cases of 800,000 adults in California who were diagnosed between 2000 and 2009 with invasive cancer, and followed through 2012.

The rate of survival was especially increased among married men — for whom the death rate was 27 percent lower than single men. Among women, marriage resulted in a 19 percent increase in survival rate.
With regard to race, whites benefited more from marriage than other groups. Hispanics and Asian Pacific Islanders benefited less, however those born in the U.S. saw a greater benefit from marriage than those who immigrated.

The patterns were minimally explained, according to the researchers, by greater economic resources among married patients, including having private health insurance and living in higher socioeconomic status neighborhoods.

According to Gomez, her team's research is not the first to point out the benefits of marriage in fighting cancer, but it is the first to assess the extent to which economic resources explain these protective effects.

"Our study provides evidence for social support as a key driver," she said in a statement.

The researchers concluded that physicians and other health professionals who treat unmarried cancer patients should ask if there is someone within their social network available to help them physically and emotionally.

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