The Whitehall Studies (named after the headquarters of the British state bureaucracy) were led by Sir Michael Marmot, who was knighted as a result of this research. The first wave included some 18,000 men. Marmot and his colleagues found that, contrary to popular ideas about “executive stress” and heart attacks felling the boss, it’s generally far less healthy—and far more stressful—on the bottom. At age 40 to 64, low-ranked clerks were three times more likely to die of any cause compared to those at the top of the heap. The correlations were graded: each step up the ladder lowered risk, each
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