Wealthier people are healthier and live longer. Why? One popular explanation is summarized in the documentary Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making us Sick? The lives of a CEO, a lab supervisor, a janitor, and an unemployed mother illustrate how class shapes opportunities for good health. Those on the top have the most access to power, resources and opportunity – and thus the best health. Those on the bottom are faced with more stressors – unpaid bills, jobs that don’t pay enough, unsafe living conditions, exposure to environmental hazards, lack of control over work and schedule, worries over children – and the fewest resources available to help them cope. The net effect is a health-wealth gradient, in which every descending rung of the socioeconomic ladder corresponds to worse health. If this were true, then increasing the wealth of a poor person would increase their health. That does not appear to be the case. In important new research David Cesarini, Erik Lindqvist, Robert Ostling and Bjorn Wallace look at the health of lottery winners in Sweden (75% of winnings within the range of approximately $20,000 to $800,000) and, importantly, on their children. Most effects on adults are reliably close to zero and in no case can wealth explain a large share of the wealth-health gradient. In adults, researchers found no evidence that wealth impacts mortality or health care utilization, with the possible exception of a small reduction in the consumption of mental health drugs. The authors also look at the health effects on the children of lottery winners. Conclusion is that inequality isn't what makes us sick. http://marginalrevolution.com/margi...politically-incorrect-paper-of-the-day-3.html
What a stupid conclusion! Moderate to high wealth and social status normally go with better education and a lifestyle that adapts the individual to the wealth acquired. Sudden acquisition of gigantic wealth, by people of low social class and education, is obviously likely to prove a rather indigestible and even possibly dangerous experience for them. There are countless histories of sportsmen, TV stars and others who have huge wealth suddenly thrust upon them and who have not known how to handle it, with predictable consequences: illness, mental problems, alcoholism, drug addiction, bankruptcy, etc. To conclude from lottery winners, of all the unrepresentative samples imaginable, that inequality is not what makes us sick is asinine.
