--- title: Men Are More Vulnerable to the Widowhood Effect description: The risk of dying after losing a spouse changes with age, a new study finds. canonical: https://time.com/6265173/men-dying-after-spouse-dies/ author: Haley Weiss article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2023-03-22T18:54:47.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:51:19.741Z article:section: Health og:title: Losing a Spouse Makes Men 70% More Likely to Die Within a Year og:description: The health impacts of losing a spouse can change with age, a new study finds og:url: https://time.com/6265173/men-dying-after-spouse-dies/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6fbfe129b5ca874c/698a3b4f16d884737fc3ba83/GettyImages-1241139470.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 5628 og:image:height: 3166 og:image:alt: Wedding rings og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Losing a Spouse Makes Men 70% More Likely to Die Within a Year twitter:description: The health impacts of losing a spouse can change with age, a new study finds twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6fbfe129b5ca874c/698a3b4f16d884737fc3ba83/GettyImages-1241139470.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Losing a Spouse Makes Men 70% More Likely to Die Within a Year > Sponsored content. 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Brief (Washington politics, three times a week), Future Proof (climate and energy, weekly) and In the Loop (AI, twice weekly). All are free at time.com/newsletters and together reach more than 1.1 million engaged readers. #### Which TIME newsletter should I subscribe to? It depends on what you follow. For a daily briefing, The Brief. For health, Health Matters. For Washington politics, D.C. Brief. For AI and technology, In the Loop. For climate and energy as a business story, Future Proof. For culture recommendations, Worth Your Time. For how TIME's journalism gets made, Inside TIME. Readers can select any combination at time.com/newsletters. #### Are TIME's newsletters free? Yes. All seven TIME newsletters are free to join at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and provides full access to TIME's journalism at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### Who writes TIME's newsletters? TIME journalists write them. Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ## Video: 'Ted Lasso' Cast Visits White House to Promote Mental Health Care [Watch (HLS stream): 'Ted Lasso' Cast Visits White House to Promote Mental Health Care](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/uuNGPKtK.m3u8) (2:39)  _Published 2023-03-20. Fictional soccer coach Ted Lasso used a White House visit Monday to encourage people, even in politically divided Washington, to make it a point to check in often with friends, family and co-workers to “ask how they’re doing, and listen, sincerely,”_  by [Haley Weiss](https://time.com/author/haley-weiss/)  ## Haley Weiss Mar 22, 2023 6:54 PM UTC  04 June 2022, Baden-Wuerttemberg, Rottweil: Wedding rings lie on the ring pillow before the start of a wedding. Photo: Silas Stein/ (Photo by Silas Stein/picture alliance via Getty Images) 04 June 2022, Baden-Wuerttemberg, Rottweil: Wedding rings lie on the ring pillow before the start of a wedding. Photo: Silas Stein/ (Photo by Silas Stein/picture alliance via Getty Images) picture alliance—Getty Images  by [Haley Weiss](https://time.com/author/haley-weiss/)  ## Haley Weiss Mar 22, 2023 6:54 PM UTC Losing a spouse forces people into what is often one of the most vulnerable parts of their lives. The negative health consequences of widowhood can stretch years down the line, but in some cases, they don’t get a chance to. The phenomenon in which both halves of a couple die in short succession is so common that it even has a name: the widowhood effect. How at risk is any given person? That depends on many contributing factors, from their [religion](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2190/OM.59.4.c?journalCode=omea) to [race](https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1016/S1529-2126%2808%2912011-2/full/html) and even their spouse’s [cause of death](https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2007.114348). But the widowhood effect is generally believed to be a problem primarily affecting closely bonded elderly couples. However, a [study](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0282892) published Mar. 22 in the journal _PLOS One_ finds that younger people—especially men—are even more at risk. Researchers in Denmark, the U.K., and Singapore studied data from almost one million Danish citizens ages 65 and older and found that the younger people were when they lost their spouse, the more susceptible they were to dying within a year. Overall, the researchers also found that in the year after losing a spouse, men were 70% more likely to die than similarly aged men who did not lose a spouse, while women were 27% more likely to die compared to women who did not become widowed. Controlling for key variables can be difficult in this type of research, says Dawn Carr, co-director of the Aging Research on Contexts, Health and Inequalities program at Florida State University (who was not involved in the study but has researched geriatric health). Old age in general means a higher risk of death, and couples often share lifestyle habits and other behaviors that play a big role in health, like diet and exercise regimens. But because of the study’s large size and long follow-up period—up to six years—the researchers were able to peer into specific risk factors for the widowhood effect. --- ### More from TIME --- **Read More**: [_Losing a Loved One Can Be Life-Threatening_](https://time.com/6195183/losing-loved-one-heart-risk/) Gender and age were two of the most influential risk factors for the widowhood effect. People in their 60s—the youngest group studied—were most likely to experience mortality linked to bereavement. “It’s a surprising finding to see those kinds of increased risks that you just really wouldn’t expect at such a young age,” says Carr. For the most part, the study authors did not speculate on the reasons for the findings. But “it could be that bereavement at a younger age—since it’s more unusual to lose a spouse so young—creates added stress compared to later in life, when it may be more anticipated,” suggests Kara Dassel, assistant dean of the Gerontology Interdisciplinary Program at the University of Utah (who was not involved in the study but has researched the experiences of dementia caregivers). Just as surprising was the finding that younger men in the study seemed to be hit harder than women by the loss of a spouse. Though it’s well known that elderly men—those around age 75 and above—suffer more from spousal loss than elderly women, such an outcome is unexpected in younger people, Carr says. Among these younger men, an increased risk of death lingered for up to three years after losing a spouse, rather than the one year seen in older age groups. Dassel and Carr suggest that among men of all ages, increased mortality risk could be tied to the detrimental effects of [loneliness in older age](https://time.com/5541166/loneliness-old-age/)—one of the biggest risk factors for early death. “A lot of these older men grew up during a time when men had certain ideas about what was appropriate and not to be masculine,” says Carr. “Men tend to rely very heavily on their spouses, in heterosexual couples, for their social needs to be met.” Carr expects that this could change gradually as younger generations grow older. The effects of loneliness, which can impact older adults’ [physical health](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-70483-3) as well as their mental health, could also help to explain another finding from the study. Although the researchers found that across all participants, mortality risk increased during the first year after a spouse’s death, it actually decreased for a few weeks immediately following their loss. This could indicate the helpful effects of immediate social support from family and friends, and might suggest that seniors need longer, more intensive support after the loss of a spouse than many of them receive. Umair Majid, a PhD student focusing on health services research at the University of Toronto (who was not involved in the study but has researched the widowhood effect), says that this finding may also reflect some of the lingering effects of waiting for a loved one to die after a long and painful decline. In those situations, a loved one’s death may close the stressful, emotional, and often physically difficult chapter of [caregiving](https://time.com/5282340/millennial-caregivers-baby-boomers/). Other studies looking at health of caretakers before their loved one dies have found that “mortality actually starts to decrease in situations where spousal loss is imminent, in situations where there’s a sort of anticipation, like in palliative care,” Majid says. **Read More**: [_Yes, You Can Actually Die of a Broken Heart_](https://time.com/6236104/broken-heart-syndrome-death/) The study also included data on people’s health care expenses before and after losing a spouse, which the researchers use as proxies for both health status and attention to personal care during times of [caregiving and grief](https://time.com/5434345/alzheimers-caregivers-struggle/). This metric allowed the researchers to draw some interesting connections, including that the increased risk of death among younger grieving spouses doesn’t come with an increase in health care spending as frequently as it does for older grieving spouses—further indicating that shock, rather than frailty, might be the key hazard for younger people, the study authors suggest. Experts also note that patterns like those found in the paper aren’t guaranteed to apply to all people. It’s easy to imagine, for instance, that in areas of the world with more collectivist cultures than Denmark, increased social support following spousal loss, or even [different outlooks](https://studenttheses.uu.nl/handle/20.500.12932/37153) on the meaning of death, could affect these outcomes. It’s also not known whether these findings would apply to non-heterosexual relationships, or even close relationships between unmarried people, a category that will likely grow as marriage rates [continue to decrease](https://www.axios.com/2023/02/25/marriage-declining-single-dating-taxes-relationships). As researchers continue to learn more about how loss can change us, says Carr, the main takeaway from this study “should be a big warning. This goes in and above other factors”—like old age—”that we would expect to cause increased risk of death following the loss of a partner.” ## Transcript Yeah, I did. I truly did not know it was going to be this one to win on the way here for better reasons than I was. But I just want to say that on behalf of myself everyone here with me today and the numerous other folks that that takes to make our show, Ted lasso, it is an honor to visit the White House and I have the opportunity to speak to the president and the first lady about the importance of mental health. It's like no matter who you are, no matter where you live, no matter who you voted for. We all probably I assume we all know someone who has or have been that someone ourselves actually that's struggle. That spelled isolated so anxious that has felt alone and it's actually one of many things that the believe it or not that we all have in common as human beings. And so That means that we is it something that we can all, you know, and should talk about with one another or feeling that way? Or when we when we recognize that and someone feeling that way. So please, you know, we encourage everyone and ends. Big theme of the show is like to check in with your, you know, your neighbor, your coworker, your friends are family and that's how they're doing and and listen, sincerely, you know yummy you will ask questions for a living but you also listen for a living. So you know who my preaching to the choir? That is okay. And while it's easier said than done, we also have to know that we should be afraid to ask for help ourselves and that does take a lot. But you wanted something that has Negative stigma to it such as mental health, and it doesn't need to be that way. And if you can ask for that, help from a professional fantastic. If you need to be a loved one, equally as good in a lot of ways cuz it's sometimes you just need to let that pressure that the pressure valve release, the president's working on and is in his own team. Although his team is real, our team is make-believe, I don't know what. They're working, very hard to make sure that it's that, you know, that option is available to as many Americans as possible in this town. A lot of folks. Don't always agree, right? You don't always feel heard seen, listen to yes, but I truly believe that we should all do our best to help take care of each other. That's that's my own personal believe. I think it's something they would appear onstage please. And we talked about the editing room and everything in between, it just like the way they take care of one another. That is the wish fulfillment of the show. Army, plane coach and these guys being professional footballers. Do you know? 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