In recent years, a growing body of scientific research indicates that human health and longevity aren't just matters of genes and habits. Rather, they seem to have a lot to do with our relative status or position in society.
The wonky term for this kind of thing is "the social determinants of health," which was recently the topic of a presentation to the West Virginia Legislature by epidemiologist and physician Dr. Camara Jones of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. While the focus of Dr. Jones' presentation was on racial disparities, she said that inequalities and inequities affect the health of all people, regardless of racial or ethnic backgrounds.
A pioneer in this field of research is the British epidemiologist Michael Marmot, who among other things studied English civil servants over a period of decades. Here's the short version of his findings: people higher up the ladder lived longer and were less sick than those lower down, even when we take individual behavior into account.
This was true despite the fact that England has universal health care. Without it, the differences would no doubt have been even worse.
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It seems that jobs and situations that give people low levels of control and impose high demands and low rewards are particularly toxic for health. Outside of the workplace, such situations might include living in bad housing or in unsafe or toxic neighborhoods or in violent family situations.
These kinds of situations seem to activate the body's stress response, which was designed to deal with short-term threats and dangers but can lead to higher risks of various kinds of diseases when the stress is prolonged or chronic. This can lead to a great susceptibility to such illnesses as diabetes and heart disease as well as greater risk of infectious disease.
A startling finding of this kind of research is that relative deprivation in early life can have lasting impacts on health years later. In one experiment, healthy adults were exposed to two kinds of rhinoviruses, which cause common colds. They were asked a series of questions about their socio-economic status. It turned out that people whose parents owned their homes when they were children were significantly less likely to get sick than those whose parents didn't.
The findings of Marmot and other researchers is pretty sobering in the context of the current recession. Based on solid research, it's sadly safe to say that some people are going to die sooner than they otherwise would have because of it. Marmot's research on jobless workers in Britain found that "people who became unemployed had 20 percent higher mortality than those who remained employed at the same social class level." ...
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