Married people tend to live longer than unmarried people. It could be that they take better care of themselves when they have the responsibility of a family. It could also be that

Question

BlackTom AI · Accepted Answer

The prompt presents a statement about the observed link between marriage and longevity and asks us to consider alternative explanations. 
Since the answer options are not provided in the list (the answer_options field is empty), we cannot enumerate and critique multiple choices. Instead, we can analyze the single available proposed completion from the answer field: 'people who are healthier are more likely to get married, so health actually predicts marriage.' 
This alternative suggests a selection effect: healthier individuals may be more attractive or capable of pursuing and sustaining marriage, which would produce a correlation between health and marriage that is not necessarily causal in the direction of marriage improving health or longevity. In reasoning terms, this is plausible because health can influence social and mating outcomes, and people who are healthier may have greater life stability, social opportunities, or desirability as partners, all of which can increase marriage likelihood. 
Now, evaluating this explanation against the general question—what else could account for married people living longer—this option highlights a potential reverse/third-variable explanation (health predicts marriage, rather than marriage causing better health or longevity). It shifts the causal arrow and underscores the importance of considering selection bias: healthier people may enter marriage more often, so the observed longevity advantage could partly reflect who gets married in the first place rather than the effects of marriage itself. 
If we had other options, we would compare them similarly: 
- A claim that marriage causes better health would imply a causal effect operating through psychosocial or behavioral mechanisms, which would be testable via longitudinal designs controlling for baseline health. 
- A claim that social support from a spouse improves health or reduces risk factors would require evidence of mediating processes. 
- A claim that the association is entirely due to confounding by socioeconomic status would require controlling for SES to see if the association persists. 
But since no additional answer choices are provided to evaluate, we focus on why the given statement—health predicting marriage—offers a reasonable alternative explanation that could contribute to the observed link between marriage and longer life, by introducing the concept of selection bias and reverse causation. 
In summary, the key idea here is that health status influencing marital likelihood can create a spurious appearance that marriage leads to better health or longer life, whereas the reality might involve a combination of selection effects and genuine causal pathways.

SOC 110-003 Quiz 11

Married people tend to live longer than unmarried people. It could be that they take better care of themselves when they have the responsibility of a family. It could also be that

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