Science/Medicine : Long-Term Widowed Do Well

A widow or widower who survives two years after the death of a spouse, a period marked by an increased mortality rate, is likely to go on to be as happy and healthy as a married person of the same age, according to new studies conducted in the United States and West Germany.

The findings were consistent with previous studies that showed newly widowed people are more likely than others to die as a result of disease or accidents in the first two years after the death of their spouses.

But after the two-year mark, the mortality rate slowed significantly, and the researchers could see no differences in the health and well-being of the long-term widowed and married people of the same age.

The results of the study of 14,000 adults, about half of them widowed, from the early 1970s to 1981, by the National Institute on Aging were released this summer during the annual meeting of the American Psychological Assn.

The results are “remarkable only in comparison to our expectations, our stereotypes . . . that widows and widowers are crotchety, unhappy, unhealthy,” researcher Paul Costa Jr. said.