Marriage in India appears to make women exercise more, but the marriage premium is actually a statistical illusion caused by a simple math error.
April 26, 2026
Original Paper
The Marriage Exercise Penalty: How Marriage Reduces Physical Activity Among Women in India
SSRN · 6563020
The Takeaway
Raw data often suggests that married women in certain regions have higher activity levels than their single counterparts. When researchers controlled for the age gap between the two groups, the supposed health benefit of marriage completely disappeared. Younger women are more active regardless of their marital status, but because they are more likely to be single, they were skewing the data. This finding overturns a decade of assumptions about how social institutions like marriage influence physical health for women. Policy makers must stop relying on broad demographic averages that mask the real drivers of public health behaviors.
From the abstract
Using a 5% sample of India's 2024 Time Use Survey, we examine associations between marriage and physical activity (ICATUS code 83: sports, outdoor activities, and walking). Cross-sectional data reveal a well-known apparent paradox: raw statistics show married adults participate in physical activity at higher rates (~75%) than nevermarried adults (~71%). This raw "premium" is entirely explained by age composition: never-married individuals average age 24, married individuals average age 42-a gap