A study released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirms that married couples are healthier than divorced, widowed and single adults.

The study bolstered a century of reports that claim that married adults are less likely to worry, suffer ill health or engage in such harmful vices as smoking, drinking and lazing on the couch.

The exception — credit the wife’s pot roast — is that married men are more likely to pack on the pounds. Some 70.6 percent of husbands were overweight or obese, compared with 65.1 percent of all men.

“Married adults have better health habits and better health, except married men are fat,” said study author Charlotte A. Schoenborn of the National Center for Health Statistics. “We don’t know why.”

The study, “Marital Status and Health: United States, 1999-2002,” was based on interviews with nearly 128,000 adults.

Among the study’s findings:
-- The link between marriage and health persists regardless of socioeconomic status, education, poverty, race, ethnicity or where people are born.
-- Unmarried adults in relationships who live together are more likely to have health problems than their married counterparts. Their health more closely resembles divorced and separated adults.
-- The association between marriage and health is strongest in young adults, though it persists throughout life.

In addition to better health overall, the study found that married people reported less lower back pain, fewer headaches and less psychological stress. They also were less likely to drink and smoke and were more physically active.