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News
Street Roots • Aug. 28-Sept. 3, 2015
The stress of achievement
A new study shows poor kids who study hard and succeed could actually be damaging their health
BY AMANDA WALDROUPE
CONTRIBÙTING WRITER
he stresses of poverty are well known among
scientists and public policy experts. The effects of
erratic sleep while homeless, the constant worry
low-income people feel about whether their paychecks will
pay the bills, fear of harassment or discrimination while
living on the street and other experiences of living in
poverty are recognized for leading to poor physical and
mental health.
New research suggests that young people who escape
poverty by doing well in school may suffer from negative
health as they age — simply because they work hard.
A study published in July in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences followed 496 black teenagers
from working-poor families living in rural Georgia. The
teenagers were “strivers” - children who exhibit more self-
control and resilience and, despite their impoverished
backgrounds, do well in school, go on to lead successful
careers and live lives better than their parents’.
Their hard wofk and resilience does not come without
cost. The researchers found the cells of teenagers who grow
up in low socioeconomic circumstances, but work hard and
succeed, age much faster than children from more affluent
backgrounds. To come to that conclusion, researchers
measured the teens’ DNA methylation, the process in which
hydrocarbon molecules are added onto DNA, which can
impact how genes express themselves at the cellular level.
The study refers to the phenomenon as “skin-deep
resilience” - on the surface, poor teens who work hard are
just that: kids who overcome all obstacles to better their
lives. But underneath that surface, that hard work could be
causing irreparable damage.
Dr. Gregory Miller, a professor of psychology and
medical-social sciences at Northwestern University, led the
study and spoke with Street Roots about self-control among
poor teens and the ramifications of the study.
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health cost That’s sobering because it’s unjust and unfair
for the kid and it’s bad for our country in terms of human
capital and the economy and public health. If the very
people who are succeeding are the ones getting the sickest
and the fastest, it makes you worry a lot about what we can
do to reduce disparity.
A.W.: Underlying your answer seems to be a critique of the
American Dream - the idea that if you work hard, you can
improve your life, climb up the socioeconomic ladder, have a
more financially secure life. You seem to be saying that comes
with a cost.
G.M.: There might be. We need more research to be
sure. This certainly suggests that in low-income kids in our
sample, the American Dream is costly. What is even more
sobering is that this is not more true for the kids in our
sample who are less disadvantaged. What we are seeing
happening happens amongst the worst off kids in the study
- the really, really disadvantaged. For the somewhat
disadvantaged,
thenot-
A.W.: What do you find sobering about the findings?
G.M.: What is so sobering for me is that the traits that
allow kids from disadvantaged backgrounds to succeed in
school and have good mental health, (are the) same traits
that seem to forecast worse physical health. What’s sobering
is that you have these kids who are beating the odds, doing
exactly what you’d want them to do in many domains of life
and who at the same time are, we think, experiencing a
G.M.: In disadvantaged communities, there are kids who
statistically you would expect to be at-risk for poor outcomes
in school, in the workplace, mental health wise, criminal
justice-wise. But there is a significant subset of these kids
who beat these numbers and beat those odds. What we see
in talking with them and interviewing them is that they are
striving for better outcomes, to go further in school than
their parents have, their grandparents, and they’re striving
in putting in lots and lots of effort. They seem, relative to
other groups .of kids, to be very intensely focused on
achievement and doing well. What we often hear with
middle class and upper class kids is that they’re trying to
succeed in school (and) get into prestigious colleges and
universities, but at the same time, they’re really busy filling
out their resumes with extracurriculars like music or
cultural efforts. These kids, by contrast, are solely focused
on school.
A.W.: Why do they focus so intensely on school? What is at
stake for them?
G.M.: We have not studied why that is yet. My
hunch is that they realize the deck is stacked
against them. The normal trajectory is to move
from high school into an industrial job. Going to
college isn’t the normative thing to do. So you
have to strive and you have to work differently and
pour yourself more into school than average.
. A.W.: Tell me about the concept of resilience from a
psychological perspective.
G.M.: You can think of self-control as the ability,
which varies from person, to person and context to
context, to stay focused on long-term goals and
achieving them. And to do that, you need to both
resist the temptation to take detours on short-term
gratification and engage in behaviors that may not be
immediately gratifying or rewarding, but over the long
term are going to move you toward the larger abstract
goals.
.
Amanda Waldroupe: Your study concludes that kids from
low-income, disadvantaged backgrounds who succeed in school
and go onto college - unlike many people in their demographic
- end up having poor health. That seems counterintuitive. You
would think that their education would teach them to treat
themselves well.
Greg Miller: The finding is a little
counterintuitive, and why it is intriguing and
sobering. We generally believe, and the data
supports, the idea that upward mobility is
associated with access to more resources like
better health care, more money for better
food, more time for physical activity, et cetera. All the
expectations (are) that strivers’ health is better. But that’s
not what we find. We still don’t know why. The research is
still in its early stages. What we think is going on is that the
striving itself is costing. It is taxing for thè body. Maybe it is
something unique to this population that faces multiple
kinds of disadvantage or a more general phenomenon. It’s a
little bit early to make any firm conclusions. The general
theory coming out of this study is that this single-minded
focus on achievement may be good for achievement, but the
downside may be health.
A.W.: Your study refers to these high-achieving,
disadvantaged kids as “strivers. ” What does that mean?
r
A.W.: What is epigenetic aging?
G.M.: Epigenetic aging is just a way to
measure how old people blood cells look, relative
to chronologically, and how much turbulence those
cells have taken.
disadvantaged, these Same traits of self-control arid
perseverance and striving are related to better physical
health. It suggests ... that for the most vulnerable among us,
the American Dream is not only hard to attain, but could be
quite costly to aftain in terms of physical health.
A.W.: What is the connection between self-control and aging
faster at the cellular level?
G.M.: Self Control is hard for everybody, right? It is a
limited resource regardless of how privileged or
disadvantaged you might be financially. That’s why we all
A.W.: Why does the study focus solely on African-American
need vacations, that’s why we all need to relax, why we all
teens living in the rural South? I imagine the findings of your
lose willpower and dive into that chocolate cake or cigarette
research apply to other segments of the disadvantaged
« or television. What we know about self-control is, in general,
population.
is that it is depletable, but also renewable if you have a little
respite.
G.M.: African-American kids, particularly in the rural
But this having to be on all the time, focused and
South, face a lot of different and unique challenges. The
watching yourself, is hard work. Eventually, people just
most at-risk kids demographically can be identified when
become physiologically taxed. If you’re African American
you look at a combination of outcomes academically,
from a low-income family from a rural area, you have to
occupationally, in criminal justice and mental health. These
work many more times as hard to get to the same place as
kids by virtue of race, class and geography... stand out for
your peers from an affluent suburb. It’s a lot more effort,
their risks. We’re interested in what places these children at discipline and a lot more self-control. And there aren’t as
risk and what protective options exist to create better
many respites.
outcomes.
See ACHIEVEMENT, page 7