The Psychology of Gender 4th Edition

354 Chapter 10

Socioeconomic Status

Socioeconomic status clearly is related to

health. With every increase in income, health

improves—even among people who are middle

to upper class. If SES is measured by earnings,

men have a higher status than women. If SES

is measured by education, women and men

have a roughly equal status. It does not appear

that differences in men’s and women’s SES

can explain sex differences in either mortality

or morbidity in the United States. However, in

countries where women lack substantially more

resources compared to men, such as India,

women’s health suffers (Roy & Chaudhuri,

2008). Unlike women from wealthier countries,

such as the United States, these women do not

practice primary prevention.

Another question is whether SES shows

the same relation to health for men and women.

Data from 2002 suggest that the relation of ed-

ucation to mortality is the same for White men

and women and the same for Black men and

women (Zajacova & Hummer, 2009). Edu-

cation is similarly associated with decreased

mortality from cancer for women and men

(Menvielle et al., 2008). However, one study

showed that education was more strongly re-

lated to physical functioning in women than in

men (Ross & Mirowsky, 2010). Among people

with a low level of education, women’s physi-

cal functioning was much worse than that of

men. However, among people with a college

education, the sex difference in physical func-

tioning disappeared. Ross and Mirowsky sug-

gested that “resource substitution” explained

this effect. Resource substitution implies that

one resource will have a stronger effect when

other resources are lacking. Because women

have fewer socioeconomic resources than

men, education has a stronger effect on their

health. It also appears that a spouse’s SES in-

fluences one’s health (Skalicka & Kunst, 2008).

In a study in Norway, husbands’ occupation,

TAKE HOME POINTS

■ The fact that women have a second X chromosome

may protect women from some genetically based

diseases.

■ Estrogens clearly play a role in women’s greater resis-

tance and vulnerability to disease. The nature of this

relation is complicated.

■ There is a paradox in immune function for women and

men. It appears that women’s immune systems may

be more responsive to infection, but also more vulner-

able to autoimmune disease.

■ Historically, research showed that men exhibited greater

cardiovascular reactivity to stressful tasks compared to

women, which was thought to provide an explanation

for men’s greater vulnerability to heart disease.

■ More recent research has shown that sex differences in

cardiovascular reactivity are dependent on the nature

of the stressor. Women’s and men’s reactivity may

be quite similar when they feel similarly challenged or

threatened.

Artifacts

One class of explanations for sex differences

in health is that the differences are not real

but are due to artifacts. Recall that artifacts are

methodological variables that might lead to the

appearance of sex differences in health even

when differences do not exist. A confounding

variable, such as SES, could be an artifact of the

relation between gender and health. Other ar-

tifactual explanations have to do with the way

that health is measured. Although mortality is

an objective index of health, many of the in-

dexes of morbidity are subjective and may be

influenced by the way they are assessed. Thus

sex differences in morbidity may be especially

vulnerable to artifacts.

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