Author: berrie

A Landmark National Study on Midlife Americans We are happy to announce that our MIDUS grant has been renewed for six more years! In celebration, we have created a MIDUS Achievements Report. Click the link below to read the entire report, which includes: The full article linked below is a pre-existing electronic document (pdf) that …

Click the link below to read the news release announcing the renewal of our MIDUS study for another six years. It begins: Childhood and older age have been, and continue to be, studied extensively. But the wide terrain known as midlife – the longest segment of the life course – had been largely uncharted until …

Low back pain and depression have been recognized as key public health problems around the world. Back pain has been ranked as the highest cause of disability worldwide, and depression is also a leading cause of global health-related burden. Research has shown that these two conditions often occur together, but the question remains of which …

Meritocracy is the belief that success in life is based on personal effort—i.e., those with skill who work hard will be rewarded, with better jobs and higher incomes. This popular U.S. belief is a basic component of the American Dream. At its core is another belief in an “even playing field” where anyone can rise …

Previous research has shown that people living in low-income neighborhoods are exposed to more stressors, such as crime, vandalism, pollution, and noise, which can be objectively measured, and have been linked to poor health. This MIDUS article looked at a more subjective assessment of neighborhood quality, asking whether people felt safe where they live, and …

Socioeconomic status (SES) is a measure of social status based on one’s level of poverty or wealth. SES has been associated with mortality in many studies. This MIDUS study looked at whether the different ways SES is measured matters when predicting mortality. Many studies have used measurements of annual income, status of one’s occupation, or …

Social media use (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc.) has become a key part of American social life. Many report spending over two hours a day connecting with others on social media, which is more time than they spend socializing face-to-face, eating, exercising, or completing household activities. Although a lot of research has addressed how increased social …

Previous research has linked a single night of bad sleep to lower well-being, but multiple nights of inadequate sleep have only been studied in clinical settings where the amount of nightly sleep was manipulated by researchers. This study was the first to look at the effects of consecutive nights of sleep loss that occurred in …

An estimated 70 million Americans suffer from chronic pain (not including pain caused by cancer). Although previous studies have shown links between discrimination and pain, they have not been studied extensively. One important unanswered question is whether different types of discrimination (major lifetime events vs. day-to-day experiences) increase the amount of interference chronic pain causes …

Studies have shown that socioeconomic status (SES) is one of the strongest predictors of body weight. Those whose families were economically disadvantaged in childhood (they had low SES) tend to be heavier in early adulthood and midlife. Given the role of body weight in promoting chronic disease, this study looked at whether these inequalities continue …