Stress has increased markedly since the 1950s according to a paper entitled, “
The Changing (Dis-)Unity of Work.” Even as modern conveniences have seemingly made life easier and perhaps safer, overall life expectancy has not increased as much as one would have desired or expected. Perhaps the negative effect of increased stress has counterbalanced the positive influences.
Stress and life expectancy was re-explored in a recently published academic article, “
CEO Stress, Aging, and Death.” Life spans of CEOs from 1,605 publicly traded companies formed the cohort examined. CEOs whose tenure included the Great Recession or industry downturn lost an average of 1.5 of life expectancy. If the CEO was protected from a take-over, an average of two years of life expectancy was added.
The study assumed that CEOs would already be financially secure and otherwise healthy. These stable characteristics would remove two obvious variables from the life expectancy changes. CEOs are stressed by long hours, high-stakes decisions, public exposure, and in some cases life and death outcomes. While non-CEOs also face significant stress with schedules, quotas, unpleasant environments, and so on, they were not included in the study because they might face personal economic stresses, thus complicating the causes for decreased life expectancy.
Also, “new data on the lifespan of CEOs and a new data set of photographs of CEOs’ faces, combined with recent visual machine learning (ML) techniques to estimate the effects on visible signs of aging” were employed. The ML techniques are a promising avenue for the assessment of work-induced strains in broader samples. Looking at aging by objectively viewing photographs over time is an additional measure of stress and aging, as used to show aging of U.S. Presidents.
Stress Defined:
Stress has different meanings. Commonly, physical, mental, and emotional strain or tension equate to stress. Likewise, but in more academic terms, stress is “a condition or feeling experienced when a person perceives that demands exceed the personal and social resources the individual is able to mobilize,” according to the American Institute of Stress. This organization believes that a third of Americans live in extremely stressful conditions.
Interestingly, the World Health Organization (WHO) recognizes stress as one of ten social determinants of health. Anxiety, insecurity, low self-esteem, and social isolation, along with lack of control over work and/or home life, are powerful stressors. Most also contribute to a lower life expectancy.
Physiological markers—increased cortisol levels and excess adrenalin (the fight or flight hormone)—are measurably elevated in stressed people. Long-term, being “always on” is deleterious to people’s health. In the digital age, people are usually “plugged in,” thus violating another important principle for good health and wellness, namely work/life balance.
Codifying the inverse correlation of stress and life expectancy by removing other factors, namely financial security and baseline health, is very worthwhile, even though the results are not surprising. De-stressing, whether for CEOs or everyone else, will be good for personal health and professional productivity.
References:
“The Changing (Dis-)Utility of Work. Journal of Economic Perspectives,” by G. Kaplan, and S. Schulhofer-Wohl (2018). 32(3), 239–258