Occupation, marriage and disease-specific mortality concordance

Abstract

Mortality statistics for more than 500 different occupations were examined for all causes of death, neoplasms, circulatory diseases, respiratory diseases, and deaths from external causes. The paper shows that a married woman's life expectancy, and her cause of death, is reliably associated with the occupational mortality risk of her husband. It demonstrates that this is so when social class is controlled, when statistically contaminating ‘outliers’ are excluded, and when the correlation of any particular cause of death with other causes of death is partialled out. The findings suggest that specific occupational risks are transmitted between marital partners, perhaps through psychological mechanisms.