Low social status is bad for your health. Biologists are starting to understand why
ONCE upon a time the overstressed executive bellowing orders into a telephone, cancelling meetings, staying late at the office and dying of a heart attack was a stereotype of modernity. That was before the Whitehall studies, a series of investigations of British civil servants begun in the 1960s. These studies found that the truth is precisely the opposite. Those at the top of the pecking order actually have the least stressful and most healthy lives. Cardiac arrest—and, indeed, early death from any cause—is the prerogative of underlings.
This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Misery index”
From the April 14th 2012 edition
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