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Primary Submission Category: Aging
Goal-Striving Stress, Lifetime SES, and Black Women’s Mental and Physical Health
Authors: Jessica Shotwell,
Presenting Author: Jessica Shotwell*
This project centers Black women as a population at elevated risk for stress-related psychological and biological aging due to the persistent effects of structural inequities on the body. Although higher socioeconomic status (SES) is typically associated with better health, Black women experience diminishing health returns to SES, such that socioeconomic advantage does not consistently confer expected psychological or physiological benefits. One potential explanation is exposure to stress processes tied to striving for upward mobility, particularly goal-striving stress (GSS), defined as the perceived stress arising from the gap between aspirations and current achievements. Existing models may underestimate risk among socioeconomically advantaged Black women who continue to experience SES-related stressors despite high socioeconomic position. The overall goal of this project is to examine the role of GSS in shaping the impact of lifetime socioeconomic status (LSES) on anxiety symptoms (AS) and allostatic load (AL), a multisystem biological indicator of physiological dysregulation and accelerated aging, among Black women. This project will use data from 330 Black women participating in the Nashville Stress and Health Study (2011–2014), a National Institute on Aging–funded population-based study of Black and White adults in Davidson County, Tennessee. Participants will be stratified into age groups representing young adulthood (18–35 years), midlife (36–49 years), and older adulthood (50+ years) for exploratory analyses examining whether associations vary across stages of adulthood. Analyses will employ ordinary least squares and modified Poisson regression models, with interaction terms used to assess moderation by GSS. By investigating the factors that shape both psychological distress and accelerated biological aging among Black women, this study advances understanding of the pathways through which structural inequality becomes embodied over the life course.