Discussion: Effects of Social Status on Health

How does social status affect health?
There is a mountain of evidence that social status, whether measured by income, wealth, esteem, occupational prestige, or education, is closely associated with nearly all measures of health and well being. In your readings and lectures for this week, there were several different explanations for why and how social status affects health.
- House argued that social class shapes access to resources that can enable better health such as money and better neighborhoods
- Marmot argued that esteem from being in a higher job category can lead to better health even when pay and benefits are similar. Marmot argues that higher status brings along with it greater feelings of confidence and self actualization that enable people to live healthier lives.
- Link argued that esteem brings better health mostly when it is accompanied by material rewards, implying that is is the rewards, more than the status, that generates advantages in health.
- Christakis argued that health can spread through social networks, implying that well off people with better health can maintain health advantages by cutting less advantaged, less healthy people out of their social networks -- or that people can generally maintain better health by more closely associating with other healthy individuals.
Prompt:
Which one of these arguments do you find most convincing, and why? Support your argument with references to the readings, lecture, or your own experience/observations.
Content: Your response should be thoughtful and should reference the assigned readings as directed by the prompt. The best strategy for answering these is to make sure youdirectly respond to all aspects of the prompt or prompts. Your answer should not be a short one or two sentence “short answer” response. It should be more considered than that, containing specific arguments and examples drawn from the readings, lecture material, or your own experiences. Some prompts will require you to compare and contrast readings, relate readings to contemporary events, or detail and recount the argument of a specific reading. Your responses should be around 500 words.