研究：男人丧妻后多活不长

美国罗彻斯特理工学院一位教授研究发现，男人丧妻后短期内死亡的几率会比正常情况下增加三成，而女性丧夫之后仍能照常生活。这位教授指出，男人丧妻之后，顿时失去了生活上和心理上照顾他的那个人，这种情形会直接影响其健康状况；而女人在生活中更加独立，丈夫去世对其生活产生的影响就相对弱一些。不过，在对6.9万名20到50岁的母亲进行的调查中，研究人员发现，在自己孩子死亡后的两年内，母亲的死亡率是正常情况的三倍。

Grieving husbands are more likely to die shortly after losing their wife, while widowed women carry on as normal, new research has found.

Men were found to be a third more likely to die after being recently widowed, compared with their normal risk of mortality.

Women, on the other hand, had no increased chance of dying after their husbands passed away, with researchers suggesting they are likely to be more independent and prepared.

Professor Javier Espinosa, who led the study at the Rochester Institute of Technology in America, said: "When a wife dies, men are often unprepared.

"They have often lost their caregiver, someone who cares for them physically and emotionally, and the loss directly impacts the husband's health.

"This same mechanism is likely weaker for most women when a husband dies.

"Therefore, the connection in mortalities for wives may be a reflection of how similar mates' lives become over time."

Professor Espinosa used data records from married people born between 1910 and 1930 to examine when partners died in relation to one another.

He found men who are grieving after their wife's death experience a 30 percent increase in mortality. For women, there is no increased chance of dying due to the loss of their husband.

The team also conducted research into maternal mortality, compiling results from more than 69,000 mothers aged between 20 and 50 over nine years.

He found that the impact on mother mortality is strongest in the two years immediately following the child's death, with grieving mothers three times more likely to die.

According to Prof Espinosa's results the chances of a mother dying increases as much as 133% after they lose a child.

Prof Espinosa, an expert in health and labor economics, said: "To my knowledge, this is the first study to empirically analyze this issue with a large, nationally represented US data set.

"The evidence of a heightened mortality rate for the mother, particularly in the first two years of the child's passing, is especially relevant to public health policy and the timing of interventions that aim to improve the adverse health outcomes mothers experience after the death of a child."

Prof Espinosa's study, Maternal bereavement: The heightened mortality of mothers after the death of a child, co-written by William Evans from the University of Notre Dame, was published in the Economics and Human Biology journal.