Spinster. Old Maid. Society traditionally looks on the single woman, spending her life alone, as a tragic tunnel with an all you can eat buffet for cats waiting at the end. But now she can turn those naysayers green with envy.

She’s probably going to outlive us all.

According to Harvard’s Men Health Watch, their January 2010 issue will report something we’ve all suspected for a while: women are the stronger sex.

Men die younger than women, and they are more burdened by illness
during life. They fall ill at a younger age and have more chronic
illnesses than women. For example, men are nearly 10 times more likely
to get inguinal hernias than women, and five times more likely to have
aortic aneurysms. American men are about four times more likely to
contract AIDS or be hit by gout; they are more than three times more
likely than women to develop kidney stones, to become alcoholics, or to
have bladder cancer. And they are about twice as likely to suffer from
emphysema or a duodenal ulcer. Although women see doctors more often
than men, men cost our society much more for medical care beyond age 65.

On its own, great news for women.  But, as the New York Times reports, it turns out that women who live alone may gain less weight over time than women who live with partners. 

After adjusting for other variables, the 10-year weight gain for an
average 140-pound woman was 20 pounds if she had a baby and a partner,
15 if she had a partner but no baby, and only 11 pounds if she was
childless with no partner. The number of women with a baby but no
partner was too small to draw statistically significant conclusions.

There
is no reason to believe that having a partner causes metabolic changes,
so the weight gain among childless women with partners was almost
surely caused by altered behavior.

Put the two studies together, and there you have it: proof that single women will outlive the rest of their compatriots.