Study Finds Never-Married Adults at Higher Cancer Risk

A large-scale study has found that adults who have never been married face significantly higher risks of developing cancer compared to those who have been married, divorced or widowed, with the disparity most pronounced for preventable cancers linked to lifestyle and infections.

Researchers at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, analyzed data from more than 4 million cancer cases among adults aged 30 and older across 12 U.S. states between 2015 and 2022. The study, published April 8, 2026, in Cancer Research Communications, drew from a population exceeding 100 million people and adjusted for factors like age, sex and race. Overall, never-married individuals accounted for about one in five adults in the dataset and showed elevated cancer incidence rates across nearly every major type.

Men who had never married were approximately 70 percent more likely to develop cancer than those who had been married at some point, while the figure for women reached about 85 percent. The gap widened for specific cancers: never-married men had roughly five times the rate of anal cancer, often tied to human papillomavirus (HPV)...