Status Syndrome: How Your Social Standing Directly Affects Your Health and Life Expectancy

doi:10.1136/bmj.329.7462.408

BMJ 2004;329:408 (14 August), doi:10.1136/bmj.329.7462.408

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Book

Status Syndrome: How Your Social Standing Directly Affects Your Health and Life Expectancy

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

In affluent nations, an individual's position in the socialhierarchy is increasingly recognised as one of the major determinantsof health. People who are lower in the hierarchy tend to haveworse health and shorter life expectancy. Michael Marmot arguesthat low social standing is seen not only as a condition ofmaterial deprivation but also as an indicator of people's capabilityto control life and fully participate in society (psychosocialdisadvantage). As a person's position in the social hierarchydecreases, the less likely he or she is to have full controlover life and opportunities for full participation in society.

Michael Marmot

Bloomsbury, £12.99,pp 311 ISBN 0 7475 7049 3 www.bloomsbury.com

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Status Syndrome is an impressive book that uses a comparativeperspective to show that inequality in health outcomes cannotbe explained by poverty or "traditional risk factors" such asgenetics, behaviour, and access to medical care. . . . [Full text of this article]

Roberto De Vogli, consultant

social epidemiology unit, Regional Health Agency of Tuscany, Italy roberto.devogli@arsanita.toscana.it