A study over 50 years has revealed that popular school children are less likely to suffer conditions such as heart disease and diabetes than their unpopular counterparts.
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PARIS: Children who are the most popular and powerful at school also enjoy better health in adult life compared to counterparts at the bottom end of the pecking order, say Swedish scientists.
The long-term study covers 14,000 children born in 1953, who were questioned in 1966 when they were 12 or 13 years old and whose health was tracked up to 2003.
The children's place in the social hierarchy was determined by asking them who they most preferred to work with at school.
To assess their health in later life, the study delved into a national databank for hospital admissions.
Lifestyle-related diseases
Individuals who had been marginalised at school were nine times likelier to develop heart disease and four times likelier to require hospital care for diabetes, which are lifestyle-related disorders.
They were also twice at risk of developing mental ill health and behavioural problems, including self harm and attempted suicide, compared with the most popular former classmates.
The pattern was the same for both men and women, although the types of ill health they developed were different.
Importantly, the results cannot be explained by the occupation, income or education of the child's family, according to the paper, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
Peer status at school could play a large and badly overlooked impact on health in later life, suggested Ylva Almquist of Stockholm University's Centre for Health Equity Studies.
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Popular kids vs others
Not that surprising on many levels. Often the popular kids are the ones that are better off socioeconomically. And these kids may also bully those "other kids" in addition to treating them like social pariahs. They often continue this behavior for the rest of their lives. As one of the biggest nerds in my school I was completely marginalized by the popular kids but I managed to survive.
Maybe the causality is the
Maybe the causality is the other way around; without knowing it, children can judge health indicators in others and are attracted to the ones most (genetically or something) predisposed to be healthy.