Stress Level Tied to Education Level

WEDNESDAY, May 12 (HealthDayNews) -- People with less education suffer fewer stressful days, according to a report in the current issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.

However, the study also found that when less-educated people did suffer stress it was more severe and had a larger impact on their health.

From this, researchers have concluded that the day-to-day factors that cause stress are not random. Where you are in society determines the kinds of problems that you have each day, and how well you will cope with them.

The research team interviewed a national sample of 1,031 adults daily for eight days about their stress level and health. People without a high school diploma reported stress on 30 percent of the study days, people with a high school degree reported stress 38 percent of the time, and people with college degrees reported stress 44 percent of the time.

"Less advantaged people are less healthy on a daily basis and are more likely to have downward turns in their health," lead researcher Dr. Joseph Grzywacz, of Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, said in a prepared statement. "The downward turns in health were connected with daily stressors, and the effect of daily stressors on their health is much more devastating for the less advantaged."

Grzywacz suggested follow-up research to determine why less-educated people report fewer days of stress when it is known their stress is more acute and chronic.

"If something happens every day, maybe it's not seen as a stressor," Grzywacz says. "Maybe it is just life?"

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Here's where you can learn more about stress.

--Dennis Thompson

SOURCES: Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, news release, May 9, 2004