They looked up the age at death of actors who won Oscars, and compared that with: 1) co-stars of those Oscar winners and; 2) actors who were nominated for but never won an Oscar.

Amazingly, Oscar winners lived four years longer than their co-stars and fellow nominees.
Stars who won multiple Oscars enjoyed an extra two-year survival boost on top of that.

That longevity isn't due to a difference in wealth; it's due purely to status. Researchers are finding out that status is not measured by bread alone. Yes, there's the objective ladder of socioeconomic status, which ranks people by annual income, net worth and educational level. But there's also a ladder of subjective social status, on which people rank themselves according to how much respect they are given by members of their peer group or community. And both ladders are valid indicators.

Your health is predicted by a combination of the two, says Adler, who pioneered the idea of measuring subjective social status.

In one of her studies, the subjective ladder did a better job of predicting heart rate, body-fat distribution and stress responses than did the objective measures of socioeconomic status.

Her advice: "If you can pick your niche and succeed in that, that's probably going to be good for your health."