Sixty-eight-year-old twins Donald (left) and Ronald Daley talk to psychiatrist George Vaillant about growing up poor in a neighborhood of Boston. Photo by Marc Halevi.

One of the world's longest studies of normal men celebrated its 60th anniversary last week. Scientists have plied them with questions, interviews, and physical exams for all that time, not to learn about disease or antisocial behavior, but to determine how healthy, law-abiding men can overcome poverty and low social status.

Born between 1925 and 1931, they were considered "underprivileged" in the 1940s. By the 1990s, they had shown an ability to evolve coping and problem-solving strategies as effective as those developed by men who have the advantages of a Harvard diploma.

"They have made lemonade out of life's lemons," notes George Vaillant, a Harvard professor of psychiatry who has been working with them since 1972. "Some modern sociologists, having followed their subjects for only a decade or so, believe that something called the 'underclass' dooms families for multiple generations. Following these men for 60 years shows such pessimism to be unjustified."

At a luncheon at the Loeb House on May 14, Vaillant thanked more than a hundred of the men and their wives for cooperating with researchers for so long. "My daughter Joanna, who worked with me, noted that you have been filling out questionnaires and submitting to physical exams and interviews periodically for six decades. She asked me what I have done for you. At age 64, I've learned to listen to my children so we, at long last, are giving you this lunch to honor you for helping us."

A Test For Delinquency

The men who attended the lunch were among 456 12- to 16- year-old inner-city boys from Boston selected in the early 1940s by Sheldon Glueck, a Harvard professor of criminology, and his wife Eleanor, a social worker. They were matched against an equal number of delinquent juveniles from the same neighborhoods, with the same IQs, same ethnicity, and attending the same junior high schools. The Gluecks followed the two groups until the men were 32 years old and discovered that the sources of delinquency lay in dysfunctional families and not in poverty, low social class, and low IQ.

The Glueck study led to what Vaillant calls a "tremendously predictive" test for delinquency. "It is still used today, although not as much as it should be," he said.

At the lunch, Timothy Davis, a psychologist studying the resilience of these inner-city volunteers, noted three major reasons for their success: a strong attachment to their parents; high-quality supervision, especially by their mothers; and dedication to schooling.

Vaillant adds one more element: work. "The capacity to work in childhood predicted the success of these men in adulthood in terms of mental health and capacity for interpersonal relationships," Vaillant says. "The least emotionally healthy third of men spent 50 times as many weeks unemployed as the most [emotionally] healthy third."

In a letter to the men, Vaillant pointed out that "your success at mastering disadvantages and finding interesting jobs has demonstrated that the enjoyment of work is not just for 'squares' but is essential to mental health."

As these men matured during the 1950s and '60s, they showed significant upward social mobility. "Their lives have demonstrated that, after age 40, 'emotional IQ' is far more valuable than college degrees," Vaillant comments. "Adaptation, not intellectual brilliance, leads to successful aging."

The men also passed on their upward mobility. Few of their parents graduated from high school, but 15 percent of the men and 41 percent of their children went to college for two or more years.

Dealing With Alcoholism

Vaillant studied alcoholism among the inner-city men and a sample of Harvard graduates. The inner-city males started to abuse alcohol when younger and were slightly more likely than college men to become alcohol-dependent. However, they were twice as likely as college men to achieve stable (five years or more) abstinence. Despite starting to abuse alcohol later, enjoying more education, the Harvard men were more likely to maintain a pattern of intermittent alcohol abuse.

The research showed that both Harvard and inner-city men with cheerless childhoods and depression were not more likely to become alcoholics than their peers. "The research documents that alcoholism causes unhappy childhoods and depression, not vice versa," Vaillant remarks.

The real causes of alcohol abuse are heredity, peer pressure, cultural drinking patterns, and availability of alcohol, Vaillant concluded. "For the Harvard and inner-city men, the most important path to recovery was not counseling, taking the drug Antabuse, or detoxification, it was attending Alcoholics Anonymous," he noted.

"Physical exams taken by both sets of men every five years show that alcohol abuse and smoking are much worse for health than being overweight, having high cholesterol, or not exercising," he added.

"The most common reason that most of you beat the odds -- besides your own pluck -- is being married to a good woman," Vaillant told the luncheon participants. "Before your wives get too cocky, however, recent research has also shown that that good husbands are just as important to women with disadvantaged childhoods. That is particularly important in later life. Genes are the major determinant in avoiding sickness up until age 70; after that, it's how well you take care of yourself and each other."

Vaillant maintains that studying ways that people like the inner- city men overcome life's difficulties provides a key to psychological mechanisms people can use to cope with stress. "These findings have led to a better understanding of how people achieve a well-adjusted and contented mind" he said. "None of this could have been possible without the loyalty and generosity of people like those we honor at today's luncheon."