Death rates from coronary heart disease (CHD) for persons aged 25 years and over are higher for the divorced, widowed, or the never-married than for persons who are currently married (Table I). This is true regardless of colour, and though there is some variation of this excess risk with age (e.g., white never-married women aged 55-64 and 65-74 have almost the same rates as white married women) it is present to some extent at all ages above 25. Is this mortality difference real, or can it be explained by systematic errors and misclassification in the registration system? Such errors could occur in the following ways: (1) Selective census under-enumeration, com-pared with married persons, of the never-married,
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Nancy S. Weiss (1973) studied this question.