Does Marriage Improve Health?

For the relationship between marriage and health,the empirical evidence from Europe and the United States is still controversial,the conclusions are also inconsistent,and there is a lack of evidence from East Asian for this question,especially from the contemporary China.Based on the cross-sectional data of CGSS 2013 and 2015,this study applied linear regression model,generalized linear model and propensity score matching to examine the impact of marriage on individual physical and mental health in the contemporary China.The study found that after controlling the heterogeneity and removing the influence of the healthy choice effect of marriage,the positive effects of marriage on health are always stable no matter we use self-evaluation of physical health,daily living ability or self-evaluation mental health as the dependent variable.In addition,the people who had not got higher education have more health gain from marriage than that of those who had received higher education.The generation who are born after the Reform and Opening get more health benefits from marriage than that of those who were born before 1978 or 1949.While from a gender perspective,there is no differences between men and women.Finally,as for the mechanism of marriage on health,marriage can significantly increase income and well-being,and thus promote the physical and mental health.Moreover,Compared with women,men can get more well-being from marriage.In short,in contemporary China,the health protection effect of marriage still exists.