Status and Longevity

I can't say that I'm all that surprised by this finding today:

Cricketers who play more Test matches can expect to enjoy a longer innings in life, according to research.

A study of England players found that those who represented their country more than 25 times had an average life expectancy of almost 80, compared with 73 for those who played fewer than 25 times.

There's a number of factors we could consider (the more sporty you are the longer you live for example?) but this backs up innumerable studies from other areas of life. As mentioned in the piece, Oscar winners live longer than nominees who don't win.

But the granddaddy of such studies is the Whitehall Study, starting off in 1967. And sadly, the consideration of such studies has been, at least at times, grossly misleading. For example, we've had Polly T's oft repeated assertion that inequality kills: and indeed it does, as all these studies show.

But the proferred solution is that we should equalise economic inequality, and that isn't the thing which is causing the difference in health outcomes. It's status inequality: those at the top of the heirarchy, almost any heirarchy, have better health than those lower down it. Thus an equalising of economic outcomes does nothing to change the health outcome, because we don't in fact (and the truth of this can be seen in the fact that Polly herself earns a fraction of a Hedgie's income, but has much higher status) measure status (purely) by economic income.

So while the situation as described, that inequality kills, may be true, the solution offered isn't going to change that.

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