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Michael Marmot's "The Status Syndrome" is not the quickest or lightest read, but it's worth it. He is an epidemiologist who has spent the last few decades studying the effects of social hierarchies on health and longevity, and this is his "popular science" book explaining his research and its implications.

Although the first thing that pops to mind on this subject is "Well, poor people have less money, and they're less educated, so they don't take care of themselves as well, so of course they get sick more," he carefully teases out these effects and others over several chapters, and comes to the conclusion that there is more at work here than the obvious.

He presents compelling evidence that it is not the absolute level of poverty or education that matters in a group's overall health, but its level relative to the rest of the society around it. In other words, once the basics of clean water and basic health care are taken of, it's not a matter of "haves and have-nots." Rather, at any given level of a society, people's health on average will be better than those below them, and worse than those above, and this effect increases as the level of inequality in a society increases.

Marmot relates this to several factors, chief of which are the chronic stress of being lower in the social hierarchy, perceived lack of control over one's circumstances, and the relative lack of resources to fully engage in one's society. (He mentions Sapolsky's work on stress hormones in baboon troops, which is what led me to read "A Primate's Memoir," below.)

As I said it's often dense reading, although very dryly funny as well, and I can't do justice to the breadth of the material he covers. However, it is possible to pull out some basic suggestions from this work that anyone can apply to their own lives, regardless of their place in the hierarchy.




“A Primate’s Memoir” is an odd mix. Ostensibly an account of the author’s research of social interactions in a baboon troop, it’s also part travelogue, part hysterically funny confessional, and part grim history.

I began reading it based on recommendations in books such as “Exuberant Animal” and “The Status Syndrome,” expecting to find more background on the effects of chronic social stress. I found some of that (take-home lesson: “Shit rolls downhill, and it sucks to be at the bottom”) but not very much. Fortunately, I also found other things..

Sapolsky segues from an initial description of his work among the baboons to anecdotes about being a clueless grad student and getting repeatedly scammed in Kenya by everyone he meets. (In return, he briefly becomes a con artist himself when the university fails to wire him needed funds.)

For the remainder of the book he moves back and forth between stories of his maturation as a field researcher, the continuing story of his baboon troop, and various side trips to other places in Africa. In turn these provide opportunities for little digressions into the history of colonial and post-colonial Africa (take-home lesson #2: “Shit rolls downhill, and it sucks to be at the bottom”).

I found it to be very entertaining, although there was not enough of the social science that I was expecting. I think that for that I’ll have to be reading his other books, such as “Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers,” but Sapolsky is readable enough that I’d probably be doing that anyway.

Good, diverting, thought-provoking read.