Status and Stress{disease, health and wealth}
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/27/status-and-stress/?ref=opinion
***SNIP
Even those who later ascend economically may show persistent effects of early-life hardship. Scientists find them more prone to illness than those who were never poor. Becoming more affluent may lower the risk of disease by lessening the sense of helplessness and allowing greater access to healthful resources like exercise, more nutritious foods and greater social support; people are not absolutely condemned by their upbringing. But the effects of early-life stress also seem to linger, unfavorably molding our nervous systems and possibly even accelerating the rate at which we age.
The British epidemiologist Michael Marmot calls the phenomenon status syndrome. Hes studied British civil servants who work in a rigid hierarchy for decades, and found that accounting for the usual suspects smoking, diet and access to health care wont completely abolish the effect. Theres a direct relationship among health, well-being and ones place in the greater scheme. The higher you are in the social hierarchy, he says, the better your health.
Dr. Marmot blames a particular type of stress. Its not necessarily the strain of a chief executive facing a lengthy to-do list, or a well-to-do parents agonizing over a childs prospects of acceptance to an elite school. Unlike those of lower rank, both the C.E.O. and the anxious parent have resources with which to address the problem. By definition, the poor have far fewer.
So the stress that kills, Dr. Marmot and others argue, is characterized by a lack of a sense of control over ones fate. Psychologists who study animals call one result of this type of strain learned helplessness.