The Hurt Locker

“In other wealthy countries, it’s the elderly who report the most chronic pain, which makes some sense. But in the United States it’s the middle-aged — especially the jobless and people … who did not graduate from high school — who suffer the most. It is a plague on the less educated.” Nicolas Kristof in the NYT (Gift Article) with an interesting look at Why Americans Feel More Pain. “The big factor in pain differences is class. One study found that poor Americans are more than three times as likely to report pain as wealthy Americans. Another found that just 2 percent of those with graduate degrees report severe pain, while almost 10 percent of high school dropouts do.”