Marriage can be a good thing for men - at least for those who want to live a long life.

Previous studies have shown that men with younger wives live longer. While it had long been assumed that women with younger husbands also live longer, in a new study Sven Drefahl from the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) in Rostock, Germany, has shown that this is not the case.

Instead, the greater the age difference from the husband, the lower the wife''''s life expectancy. This is the case irrespective of whether the woman is younger or older than her spouse.