Probably most of you know the familiar result that social status is one of the best predictors of personal health, even when adjusting for other measurable variables. David Cutler, Adriana Lleras-Muny and Tom Vogl have looked at the evidence more carefully and come up with the following:
This paper reviews the evidence on the well-known positive association
between socioeconomic status and health. We focus on four dimensions of
socioeconomic status — education, financial resources, rank, and race
and ethnicity — paying particular attention to how the mechanisms
linking health to each of these dimensions diverge and coincide. The
extent to which socioeconomic advantage causes good health varies, both
across these four dimensions and across the phases of the lifecycle.
Circumstances in early life play a crucial role in determining the
co-evolution of socioeconomic status and health throughout adulthood.
In adulthood, a considerable part of the association runs from health
to socioeconomic status, at least in the case of wealth. The diversity
of pathways casts doubt upon theories that treat socioeconomic status
as a unified concept.
In other words, "we don’t know." My simplistic view has long been that high status simply helps "keep the juices flowing," in Roissy-like fashion, and that’s good for you all over.
Can any of you high-status people find an ungated copy?
What gives? I thought you weren’t linking to Roissy.
sir,
for shame for that link! would be far better for the world if gentlemen such as “roissy” did not make their life’s work a mockery of honor and gallantry!
yours truly
c. v. snicker
nber15.nber.org/essentials/paper7.pdf
Sorry, the “nber15.nber.org/essentials/paper7.pdf” link turns out to be incorrect.
I recommend Sir Michael Marmot’s _The Status Syndrome_ for a book length treatment of this. IIRC Sir Michael said that stress pathways from low status was the cause of higher mortality associated w/ low status. I’m just a layman but I thought the book was pretty well argued.
I agree that you economic status has something to do with your health. I think that sometimes when your economic status is low it increases your risk of stress. A lot of this comes from not having enough money to support you family. I also believe that your health can be lowered when your economic status is high because of the high levels of stress someone receives from working a intensive labor job. Therefore your economic status can effect your health in positive and negative ways.
I believe Eric Crampton actually meant to cite to The Bell Curve.
There’s a pretty long string of research linking geography, poverty, and adverse health outcomes. Just to touch the tip of the iceberg, poor people live in areas exposed to more industrial pollutants, further from good hospitals and clinics, further from jobs, closer to crime, and even further from grocery stores (which means they have to rely on 7 Eleven–not exactly known for its produce–for meals). If you don’t understand how ghettos were constructed by segregation and deindustrialization, then you should consult T. Sugrue’s Origins of the Urban Crisis. For a look at these phenomena in Oakland (Alameda Co.), see the works of Dr. Anthony Iton.
This is pretty irrelevant, but I feel honor-bound to defend 7-11 from this scurrilous attack. I quasi-frequently purchase very healthy meals from 7-11, including bananas, apples, hard-boiled eggs, fruit smoothies, milk, yogurt, and sandwiches on whole-wheat bread. They also have other healthy foods that require preparation and that I don’t buy. Of course the selection of unhealthy foods is greater, but if you try you can get good meals at 7-11.
“In adulthood, a considerable part of the association runs from health to socioeconomic status, at least in the case of wealth.”
This means health causes wealth, right? I’m not sure, the wording is confusing. Maybe I’d better go get a checkup.
If so, I’d tend to agree. I don’t think people would like to admit to themselves how much they tend to shun the sick (and people with problems generally). We talk about things as if the world is an accepting place, but in reality, people are a lot more self-interested than they think they are. If you can’t do something for them, you are rejected, in big or little ways. Reverse snowball ensues. As Bono said, “the rich stay healthy and the sick stay poor.”
The problem with attributing health disparities to IQ differences is that IQ is also dependent on environmental factors:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/opinion/09nisbett.html
No, SES is not an important determinant of IQ; family environment has no great influence on the individual and their later life outcomes as study after study show.
80% of the variance in IQ is genetic, the rest comes from nonshared environment (environments unique to the individual — not shared with siblings).
Ian Deary tracked people over their whole lifespan. The IQ scores measured at age 11 were the same as IQ scores at age 77, and these early differences are what predicted later health.
It would be interesting to know how much the causation goes from IQ to health (you understand the doctor’s instructions better, you correctly work out that these symptoms require an immediate trip to the hospital, etc.), and how much from early childhood health (caused by genetics and environment) affecting both IQ and health later in life. In the extreme case, if you’re malnourished and sick for most of your childhood, that might depress both your IQ and your expected lifespan.
Does anyone know if there’s data that addresses that?
BK,
Look, if you don’t know the behavioral genetic literature, or its methods, then please don’t spout off about it as if you do. IQ in preschool, and even in infancy, predicts adult IQ almost as well. You can take any kinship comparison you want and get the same results (step-siblings, half-siblings, cousins, mis-identified twins, “virtual” twins, DZ twins, adopted siblings); shared environment in the “formative years” doesn’t matter very much. Similarities that can’t be accounted for by genes fade and disappear with age, regardless of proximity. Meanwhile genetic relatives become more alike over time, whether or not they even know eachother.
T, again if you don’t know what the literature shows, then do your homework, and report what you find (e.g. “scientists have yet to investigate if…”, or “studies reject the idea…”). But if you can’t be bothered, don’t mislead other people by pretending you know what the research shows or what research doesn’t exist.
Monochorionic MZ twins (share placenta) are no more similar than Dichorionic MZ twins (don’t share). And DZ twins (who are all Dichorionic) are no more similar at adulthood than typial siblings.
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