Thursday, August 21, 2008
Many wives help men live longer
Scientific fact, from, you guessed it, New Scientist:
It might be due to the grandfather effect (read the article for more on that), or just that polygamists are more likely to have a wife (or three) when they are elderly, and therefore more likely to be looked after.
After accounting for socioeconomic differences, men aged over 60 from 140 countries that practice polygamy to varying degrees lived on average 12% longer than men from 49 mostly monogamous nations, says Virpi Lummaa, an ecologist at the University of Sheffield, UK.
It might be due to the grandfather effect (read the article for more on that), or just that polygamists are more likely to have a wife (or three) when they are elderly, and therefore more likely to be looked after.
Labels: wives
