Want to Live Longer? Get a Second Wife.

Want to live a little longer? Get a second wife. New research suggests that men from polygamous cultures outlive those from monogamous ones.

After accounting for socioeconomic differences, men aged over 60 from 140 countries that practice polygamy to varying degrees lived on average 12% longer than men from 49 mostly monogamous nations, says Virpi Lummaa, an ecologist at the University of Sheffield, UK.

Lummaa presented her findings last week at the International Society for Behavioral Ecology’s annual meeting in Ithaca, New York.

Rather than a call to polygamy, the research might solve a long-standing puzzle in human biology: Why do men live so long?

This question only makes sense after asking the same for women, who - unlike nearly all other animals - live long past the menopause.

Enforced monogamy

One answer seems to be a phenomenon called the grandmother effect. For every 10 years a woman survives past the menopause, she gains two additional grandchildren, Lummaa says. It seems that doting on and spoiling grandchildren aids their survival, as well as furthering some of their grandmother’s genes.

Men, by contrast, can reproduce well into their 60s and even 70s and 80s, and most researchers assumed this explained their longevity. But Lummaa and colleague Andy Russell wondered whether other factors explained the long lifespan of men, such as a grandfather effect.

To test this possibility, the team analysed church-gathered records for 25,000 Finns from the 18th and 19th centuries. People tended to move little, no one practiced contraception and the Lutheran Church enforced monogamy.

Only widowed men could remarry, and if they had children with their new wife, they fathered more kids, on average, than men who married once.

But ultimately remarried men "don’t end up with any more grandchildren," Lummaa says. "If anything the presence of a grandfather was associated with decreased survival of grandchildren."

Perhaps, Lummaa adds, the children of the first mother lose out on food and resources that go to the second mother’s kids. "It's kind of the Cinderella effect."

Even fathers with only one wife provided no benefit to their grandchildren, a finding supported by previous research.

Biological selection

With the grandfather effect ruled out, Lummaa and Russell next wondered whether the constraints of human physiology explain male longevity. In the same way that men have nipples that evolved for women to nourish their young, male longevity might be a consequence of biological selection for long-lived women.

To answer this question, the researchers compared the lifespan of men from polygamous countries with those from monogamous nations.

Using data from the World Health Organization, Lummaa and Russell scored 189 countries on a monogamy scale of one to four - totally monogamous to mostly polygamous. They also took into account a country's gross domestic product and average income to minimise the effect of better nutrition and healthcare in monogamous Western nations.

Lummaa stressed that their monogamy score is a crude first stab, and they are working to find multiple ways to assess marriage patterns. The conclusions could evaporate under further analysis, she adds.

If female survival is the main explanation for male longevity, then monogamous and polygamous men would live for about the same length of time. Instead, it seems that fathering more kids with more wives leads to increased male longevity. Men, then, live long because they're fertile well into their grey years.

The explanation could be both social and genetic. Men who continue fathering kids into their 60s and 70s could take better care for their bodies because they have mouths to feed. But evolutionary forces acting over thousands of years could also select for longer-lived men in polygamous cultures.

"It's a valid hypothesis and good prediction," says Chris Wilson, an evolutionary anthropologist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who attended the talk. But the care and attention of several wives who depend on the social status of their ageing husband could explain everything. "It doesn't surprise me that men in those societies live longer than men in monogamous societies, where they become widowed and have nobody to care for them."



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Smokers More Appealing To Singles Now Than a Few Years Ago: Survey

The stigma around smoking has become so pronounced that, to borrow a phrase from Denis Leary, it seems the only place folks can light up is in their apartment, under a blanket, with all the lights out.

But despite the taboo, a new nationwide survey shows significantly more Canadians would consider dating a smoker now than three years ago.

In 2005, Ipsos-Reid asked 884 Canadian adults for Lavalife if they would date a smoker. Fully 56 per cent said they would not. This year, the dating website asked the same question of 6,313 Canadian adults and found the proportion of people unwilling to start a relationship with a smoker had dropped nine points to 47 per cent - 43 per cent of men and 51 per cent of women.

According to one researcher, however, that doesn't mean smoking is getting sexy.

James Fowler, an expert on the social costs of smoking, says anti-tobacco messages and bylaws have been so successful in stigmatizing cigarettes in recent years that lighting up has been transformed from a public act to a private vice. The survey results could be interpreted as a victory for the anti-smoking movement: he believes they suggest many non-smokers have forgotten "how gross it is" to be around tobacco users.

"The incidences of smoking are declining so much that people have fewer and fewer persistent, direct exposure to smokers," says Fowler, a professor at the University of California, San Diego. "The consequence is that when someone asks them in the abstract, 'Would you date a smoker,' it affects their answer."

The latest Canadian Tobacco Use Monitoring Survey shows smoking rates in Canada have declined by almost one-half in the last two decades, from 35 per cent in 1985 to 19 per cent (just under five million people age 15 and older) in 2006.

Among the ex-smokers is Lorna Stelmack, an Edmonton office manager who, after quitting in 1999, swore she'd never date a man who smoked.

Recently, however, she reconsidered after meeting a potential mate who liked to light up.

"I can't sweat the small things. Life's too short," says Stelmack. "I think people are just making their own choices now more than ever. People are more open."

Another possibility to explain the renewed acceptance, say experts, is that campaigns about the dangers of smoking and second-hand smoke are losing impact. A recent Health Canada report showed the percentage of smokers who find cigarette packages' graphic images ineffective has climbed five points to 57 per cent in the last five years.

Federal financial commitments also changed during that time, says Rob Cunningham, senior policy analyst for the Canadian Cancer Society.

"Five years ago, Health Canada was spending about $25 million annually on mass-media advertising campaigns to discourage smoking," he says. "Those campaigns have now been eliminated."

On balance, however, Cunningham believes the survey findings gives hope to those who would like to snuff out smoking, which causes 37,000 deaths each year in Canada.

"Essentially, half of people would not date a smoker, and that's a lot," he says. "For young people, this is a potential piece of information that could influence their smoking decision."

Daniele Parent, an etiquette coach from Montreal, didn't think dating a smoker would be a big deal when she launched a new romance.

"Perfection is quite boring" in a partner, she says.

But now that their relationship has gotten serious, she finds his habit is becoming a source of conflict.

"My boyfriend is so charming and has a lot of good qualities. But I find this little thing is really starting to bother me," says Parent. "I won't live with him until he stops, and that's a problem."

The 2005 survey is considered accurate within 3.3 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. The 2008 survey is considered accurate within 1.23 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.



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