Marital Status, Illness and the Use of Health Service

This is an interim report of the project investigating the use of hospital in-patient care by married and non-married people. The project developed from the work of Dr. Morton Kramer during a sabbatical year at the London School of Hygiene in 1968 in which he drew attention to the large

variations in hospital admission rates and lengths of stay between married and non-married patients. The proposal was subsequently made to the DHSS in 1972-3 that further investigation of this phenomenon should form part of the research programme of the Unit during that year. For the

past 18 months the authors of this report have been reviewing the literature on the relationship between marital status, illness and the use of health services, and they have also carried out further extensive analyses of information COllected in the Hospital In-Patient Enquiry and

Hospital Activity Analysis. The results of that work are presented in this report, which is intended to form a background to the proposals (submitted separately) for the fieldwork stage of the project. The report first reviews the evidence of differential utilisation rates between married and non-married people, and then discusses some causes and consequences of them.