Zdraví a rodinný stav

This article focuses on the link between marital status and health and presents an overview of the theories and empirical studies that are devoted to this issue. The article examines the issues of selection and causality, the importance of the quality of a union, gender differences, marital and partnership histories, and social context. It shows that, while the link between marital status and mortality or physical and mental health is well documented in the literature, the relative signifi cance of causality and selection is still under discussion. The contemporary literature does not even have a clear answer yet for the question of how much the link between marital status and health is mediated by institutional factors.