College might be a ticket out of poverty, but for blacks and Hispanics making the climb, it might not be a ticket to good physical health, UNC-Chapel Hill researchers say.
In fact, yardsticks like blood pressure and blood chemistry indicate students who start from “higher levels of disadvantage” may “actually experience a cost” to their future health from the stress surrounding the experience, a team led by post-doc Lauren Gaydosh and sociology professor Kathleen Mullan Harris said in a recent research paper.
The pattern, observed in a multi-decade study that began tracking 20,745 people who were teens in the 1990s, is notable because “we didn’t find any evidence that this is restricted to any one region of the country or to rural or urban parts of the country,” Gaydosh said. “This is not a rural phenomenon, or a Southern one.”
Harris and other UNC researchers are well-placed to address that, as they manage “Add Health,” also known as the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. The project dates from 1994 and includes data from questionnaires, interviews and biological samples. Participants have gone through four rounds of questioning over the years, most recently in 2008. A fifth round is due soon.
The researchers speculate that while they’re “psychologically hardy,” they still have to deal with discrimination, social isolation, a lack of support and the fear “their achieved position is tenuous.” They cope, but the stress works “a wear and tear on bodily systems from hard-driving effort.”
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