Status drop likelier to affect men more

Men who slide down the social ladder tend to suffer more from their drop in status than women who have the same misfortune.

In a study published in the October issue of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, researchers found that men who experienced a downward social shift were four times more likely to feel depressed than men who improved their social status, but there was no marked difference in the mental health between women who moved up or down the ladder.

Women in the study were actually twice as likely to be downwardly mobile but generally avoided the depression and poor psychological well-being shown by men, the study found.

The researchers, from Britain’s Newcastle University, used the occupation of the head of the household as the marker for social status and surveyed men and women born in 1947 in the industrial town of Newcastle in northeast England.