Women, individuals with lower income and people with lower
education are the most stressed according to a new study. Stress
does not keep building up as older Americans reported low stress
levels. Stress levels across Americans are only now being able
to be compared thanks to the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), which
was first used in the 1980's. Looking at studies across three
decades, researchers were able to uncover stress patterns
including how gender, race, age, income, employment and
education affect stress levels. The research was led by Sheldon
Cohen, PhD, and Denise Janicki-Deverts, PhD, both from Carnegie
Mellon University. Researchers examined data collected from a
1983 survey of 2,387 American adults over the age of 18 as well
as two studies, one in 2006 and another in 2009, which surveyed
2,000 Americans. All three surveys used PSS, which was developed
by Dr. Cohen, which allowed for the surveys to be compared. For
all three studies, women, lower-educated individuals and people
with lower income ha