Social Econ Blog

This study finds hostile wives and domineering husbands have heart problems (and trigger heart problems in their spouses). According to its authors, this study supports a "small but growing body of research that suggests that beyond the health benefits of being married, marital quality seems to make a difference in heart health." If true, these results suggest additional reasons for people to invest in either searching for a better match or in developing better bargaining/negotiation skills.

Of course, the authors only report a correlation which they interpret at causal. The media loves to report these kinds of findings, but what if the causality runs in the opposite direction (i.e., bad hearts make people more hostile or domineering) or what if some other variable (like diet, income, or education) is responsible for both the bad hearts and bad behavior?