Recent research into job stress performed at Stanford and Harvard suggests that years can be taken from you due to the stress factors at your job. In fact, they say, your job just may be killing you. Literally.

The research also goes on to say that stress levels in the workplace can be very different depending on race, age and gender, according to The Washington Post. In fact, some groups can lose as much as three years off their expected life spans. This, also, seems to support recent research that states how life expectancies differ vastly depending on the region of the United States you live in. Some of the more extreme results have shown that in certain parts of the country, people are living more than thirty years longer than some people in other parts of the country.

Another study showed that people with more than a high school education were living longer than those that don’t. Those with less than twelve years of education are living only as long as people did back in the 1950’s. People with less education have less opportunity and are, therefore, exposed to far more stress factors like low wages, exposure to pollutants, poor diets, less health care access as well as smoking and drinking levels that are higher than the more affluent.

The Harvard and Sanford studies considered 18 workplace factors including job security, salary, health insurance availability, long hours, family-work stress and others. One of the findings is that less education means landing a job with far more stress factors that lend themselves to an unhealthy lifestyle and a shortened life span.

While women seemed to fare better and live longer than men, the study did find that Latin women actually died far earlier than Latin men do. The researchers hope that these types of studies will create better working environments for everyone. The greatest stress factors studied were low social support at work, no control over their job and high demands from employers, shift work, no security on the job, and no health insurance availability.