A major study released this week shows that divorce or the death of a spouse substantially increases the chances of ill-health in adults, even when they remarry. 

According to the study of more than 8,000 people, the divorced or widowed have 20 per cent more chronic health conditions such as heart disease, diabetes or cancer than married people. 

Among the remarried, these problems still occur 12 per cent more frequently. 

What this tells us, of course, is that marriage is good for the health and it is something the Government should carefully note if it wants to drive down the cost of the health system. If prevention is better than cure, then maybe marriage is the best prevention of all. 

Will the Government take note? It’s extremely unlikely given how far down the ‘family diversity’ road it has gone. It gives no evidence that it sees any special value in marriage. 

Incidentally, another study produced a year or so ago found that marriage is also good for the environment. The more marriages there are in a given society, the more people there will be in each household. This stands to reason. 

On the other hand, each time a couple splits up divorces, a family gets divided across two households. In addition, if people don’t marry at all, more and more people will end up living alone, leading to another increase in the number of households. 

The more households there are the more carbon emissions etc there will be. QED. The Greens should take particular note of this. They won’t, of course, because they have gone further down the ‘family diversity’ road than anyone.