Re: LONGEVITY: Social Factors

Robin Hanson (hanson@econ.berkeley.edu)
Wed, 19 Aug 1998 11:48:38 -0700

Mark writes:
>>It's not at all clear that stratification hurts the people on top,
>
>Don't you mean helps the people on top?

I was responding to Katheryn's claim that "a heavily stratified society can adversely affect everyone within it equally."

J. Maxwell Legg writes:
>I also noted that you didn't counter the original
>article's allegations to the fact that it is ultimately the exhaustion caused by
>stress induced despair which is the cause of these predominantly fascist countries'
>higher mortality rates.

Stress is a likely a big reason why lower status people have worse health, but the literature doesn't attribute this to "exhaustion" or "despair". And low status goes with low health everywhere in the world.

Robin Hanson
hanson@econ.berkeley.edu http://hanson.berkeley.edu/ RWJF Health Policy Scholar, Sch. of Public Health 510-643-1884 140 Warren Hall, UC Berkeley, CA 94720-7360 FAX: 510-643-2627