September 17, 2004

Status syndrome

Posted by Chris

I’ve spent the past couple of days at the latest in a series of conferences under the name Priority in Practice , which Jo Wolff has organized at UCL. I don’t think I’d be diminishing the contribution of the other speakers by saying that Michael Marmot was the real star of the show. He’s well known for the idea that status inequality is directly implicated in health outcomes, a thesis that he promotes in his most recent book Status Syndrome and which first came to the fore with his Whitehall Study which showed that more highly promoted civil servants live longer even when we control for matters like lifestyle, smoking etc. Even when people have enough, materially speaking, their position in a status hierarchy still impacts upon their longevity. One interesting other finding that he revealed was that being in control at home (as opposed to at work) was massively important in affecting women’s longevity, but didn’t really impact upon men. There’s an excellent interview of Marmot by Harry Kreisler of Berkeley in which he outlines his central claims.

Posted on September 17, 2004 11:05 AM UTC
Comments

I don’t think I’d be diminishing the contribution of the other speakers by saying that Michael Marmot was the real star of the show

Presumably he therefore got loads of opportunities to mate while the other speakers sat around grooming each other, became depressed and suffered adverse health outcomes?

(Actually when I think about it this is not necessarily all that inaccurate a description of most conferences I’ve been to).

Posted by dsquared · September 17, 2004 11:38 AM

I believe the alternative theory is that his innate good health results in above average vigor, giving him both greater mating capacity than the other conference participants, and the energy to write especially influential papers.

Posted by y81 · September 17, 2004 02:10 PM

Another theory is that while he is distracted and consumed by his greatness, lesser beings are doing the mating.

Posted by wood turtle · September 17, 2004 03:19 PM

Just for the record, btw, that monkey-related joke was simply mine, perhaps influenced subconsciously by his surname. Marmot’s work on inequality and health outcomes is good, serious, fact-based stuff and refreshingly free of ad hominid arguments.

Posted by dsquared · September 17, 2004 04:44 PM

Oh and one thing I forgot to mention; although I’ve got a lo of respect for Marmot’s work in asking the right questions and putting the data together, I do think that there are still real problems with the statistical interpretation of that data which haven’t been solved yet. It’s basically the same critique as one might make of John Lott’s newspaper bias study; the statement “even controlling for factors such as …” is a hell of a strong one, particularly when some of the relationships (ie between income and health) might be non-linear. On the other hand I have no suggestions whatever about how one might improve methodology in this area, so I suppose it might be suggested that I shut my yap.

Posted by dsquared · September 17, 2004 04:50 PM

dsquared: “Just for the record, btw, that monkey-related joke was simply mine, perhaps influenced subconsciously by his surname.”

I’ll have you know that marmots are not monkeys. A soliciter will be contacting your shortly. You’ll be able to recognize him by the short, stubby legs, thick coat of hair, and the fact that he’s a marmot.

Posted by Barry · September 17, 2004 08:23 PM

Barry, you’ve been had. Only monkeys are licensed to practice law in Britain.

Posted by Walt Pohl · September 17, 2004 10:42 PM
Followups

This discussion has been closed. Thanks to everyone who contributed.