I Mean Isn't Everyone Stressed?

The Starting Gate: Birth Weight and Life Chances addressed many generalizations about how race and class affect health, from pre-birth until late adulthood. Something that grabbed my attention was the idea that social classes come with their own predetermined level of stress which can directly affect someone's health. For example, some authors suggest that "being at the bottom of a social hierarchy is inherently more stressful." These authors therefore believe that people in a lower social class will naturally have worse health than someone being at the top of the social hierarchy, because living at the top is "inherently less stressful." While this assumption is somewhat understandable, I would ask the authors to look at some of the businessmen, CEOs, and lawyers walking around with bags under their eyes from exhaustion and an extra layer of fat strategically placed around the center to yell out to people "hey, i'm stressed." My father and a handful of my uncles can fit into this category because part of their job description is to make decisions that affect entire companies, everyone it employs, and the families of the employers. Anyone would argue that is a tremendous amount of stress to put on an individual. Also, currently in this country, the more you make, the more you pay. Even though, my father has five children to support and eventually put through college, because of his income, he pays more through taxes than other families. I would never say that the lower class still does not have more stress than the upper class, however to suggest that the same health deterioration brought on by stress is not as prevalent in the upper class in unfair, I think they are just better equipped to take care of it after it takes hold.