Disentangling the Stress Process: Race/Ethnic Differences in the Exposure and Appraisal of Chronic Stressors among Older Adults.

Objectives: Exposure to stressors is differentially distributed by race/ethnicity with minority groups reporting a higher stress burden than their white counterparts. However, to really understand the extent to which some groups bear a disproportionate stress burden we need to consider race/ethnic differences in stress appraisal, specifically how upsetting stressors may be, in addition to stress exposure. We examine racial/ethnic differences in both the number of reported chronic stressors across 5 domains (health, financial, residential, relationship and caregiving) and their appraised stressfulness among a diverse sample of older adults.

Method: Data come from 6,567 adults ages 52+ from the 2006 Health and Retirement Study.

Results: Results show older blacks, US and foreign-born Hispanics report more chronic stress exposure than whites and are two to three times as likely to experience financial strain and housing-related stress. Socioeconomic factors fully explain the Hispanic-white difference in stress exposure, but black-white differences remain. Despite experiencing a greater number of stressors, blacks and US-born Hispanics are less likely to be upset by exposure to stressors than whites. US-born Hispanics are less upset by relationship-based stressors specifically, while blacks are less upset across all stress domains in fully adjusted models. Foreign-born Hispanics are only less upset by caregiving strain.

Discussion: The distinction between exposure and appraisal based measures of stress may shed light on important pathways that differentially contribute to race/ethnic physical and mental health disparities.