Wealth is Health

In every sense, society is stratified, by race, sex, sexuality, religion, economic status, religion and so on. All these identities sum up an entire individual and all play a role in determining the kind of interactions said individual has with the social institutions. Health and medicine is one of them. Instinctively, one might guess that people lower in the socioeconomic ladder generally experience poorer health due to lesser access to healthcare. That is in fact true but that isn’t the only reason why. Low working class people actually have higher odds of falling ill because they are exposed to higher levels of stress. These absurdly high levels of stress come from the uncertainty that accompanies being in the lower class of society. Working class people are constantly battling fears of job insecurity while also resisting the other pressures that comes from being in the working class. This was revealed in study where people of varying socioeconomic statuses were infected with a virus. Results showed that those lower down in the ladder were more likely to respond to the virus than others. These results indicated a compromise of their immune systems, possibly due to increase in cortisol (stress hormone) levels. Therefore, we can postulate that income level, as well as job security, affects the quality of health individuals have.