Money causes the most stress for Americans, followed by self-pressure and lack of sleep. (Photo by Flickr user Keirsten Marie via Creative Commons license)
Money causes the most stress for Americans, followed by self-pressure and lack of sleep. Health and job pressures round out the top five, according to GfK, a market and consumer information company.
Thirty-five percent of Americans say money worries them the most, with finances being a bigger concern for women (42 percent) than for men (28 percent). Six-in-10 Americans say they’d rate their personal financial situation as “fair” or “poor”.
On average, Americans sleep 6.8 hours a night. (Photo by Flickr user Tony Alter via Creative Commons license)
Forty percent of Americans get less sleep than the experts recommend, fewer than seven hours nightly. On average, Americans sleep 6.8 hours a night. In 1942, we were getting 7.8 hours of sleep.
Experts recommend seven to nine hours sleep for adults. Lack of sleep can cause health problems and cognitive impairment.
When it comes to their health, worries about the cost of health care and having access to it, concern Americans most. Those two things have been a major concern for Americans since the early 2000s.
Workplace stress can have a serious impact on health. A recent study found people are most worried about losing their jobs, which increases the odds of having poor health by 50 percent. The same study showed that working long hours ups the chances of early death by 20 percent.
The top two stressors — finances and self pressure — can really kick into high gear this time of year. Christmas and other holiday shopping can leave Americans feeling pressed to get everything done on time, while also worrying about finding the money to pay for those gifts for friends and loved ones.
Society is MAD!
It’s all quite a shame for the millions of suffering individuals who have to bear the brunt of it.
It’s all a viscious cycle:
If housing, tuition, healthcare, household products, vehicles, and technical items were priced affordably (based on the supply – demand ratio) there would be MUCH less overall stress. The problem is that the negligible pressure to “live up” to the system makes the consumer population vulnerable to price hikes; and the overspending habits only further increase stress and money worries – ultimately leading to health issues as well.
A hundred years ago it was nothing short of a “pie in the sky dream” that the typical American would ever be able to have a regular conversation overseas from anywhere on the spur of the moment. Or that a typical citizen could cross the Atlantic in a matter of hours. Or that one could whip out of his pocket a screen that would catch a recent news event somewhere else in the world as it was happening… Or that you could conveniently “refrigerate” your home to a desired temperature in a matter of minutes on a hot summer day… Or that the typical American would know that a sizeable percentage of the world’s population is suffering from hunger issues while America itself is regularly exploiting mother nature planting agriculture products which will knowingly be 30 – 40% wasted for lack of consumers… (Simultaneously, the high seas are ever active with cargo ships keeping world commerce open and lucrative for pennies on the dollar…)
Who would ever have believed that society today would ever have drifted so far out of its senses to virtually consign itself to stress, sleeplessness, worry, fatigue, family tension, and debt pileup? It’s all a viscious cycle spurred on by greed, and I believe that the ultimate solution will begin when the strain (combined with outside forces) will induce people to wind down once and for all – and learn to actually ENJOY what they have – instead of always thirsting for more.
If the money-hungry real estators, corporations, manufacturers, and resource suppliers (not to mention the health industry, which becomes a necessary result of all this stress) would not get their desired response with their over-pricing, the mad cycle would finally be able to cool itself off.
Ultimately, EVERYBODY would gain – nobody would lose with this kind of normalcy.