Socioeconomic status and health : the role of lifestyle choices
Year: 2012
Type: dissertation
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: This thesis focuses on the relationship between socioeconomic status, health and related lifestyle choices. It uses repeated cross-section and stated preference data from Norway and consists of four papers.\nThe first paper compares sources of inequality in health, represented by self-assessed health and obesity, with sources of inequality in lifestyle choices central to the production of health, represented by physical activity, cigarette smoking and two indicators of healthy dietary behavior; the consumption of fish and the consumption of fruits and vegetables. The results demonstrate that patterns of inequality in health are not necessarily representative of patterns of inequality in important, underlying production factors of health, and that education and income are not always the most important sources of inequality in lifestyles.\nThe second paper examines how education and income differences in physical activity, the consumption of fruits and vegetables, cigarette smoking and self-assessed health evolve over the adult life course. Although mixed, the results provide some evidence of increased health consciousness and associated lifestyle improvements in age among lower socioeconomic status groups. Such improvements may potentially contribute to reducing cumulative advantage effects in health by socioeconomic status at older ages.\nThe third paper estimates the demand for physical activity and fruits and vegetables using latent class models, focusing on subpopulation heterogeneity in the effects of education and income. The results suggest that among the majority of the population that should be more physically active and eat more fruits and vegetables, the role of education and income may be even more important than previously assumed.\nThe fourth paper uses stated preference data on semi-hard cheese to examine how diet choices are affected by exposure to health information, and more specifically it examines to what extent such health information effects vary by education, income, age and gender. The results suggest a promising role for health information policies in reducing educational differences in diet-health knowledge and thus dietary behavior. Targeting low income groups, young people and particularly males through health information policies seems more difficult.\nAlthough the nature of our data do not allow for making causal inference, the results of this thesis are generally suggestive of there being a closer triangular relationship between education, lifestyles and health than between income, lifestyles and health. Thus, at least for policies aimed at improving population health through improved lifestyle habits, it seems more important to target low education groups than low income groups. Related to this, the results of the thesis demonstrate that one should be careful in treating socioeconomic status as a unified concept. Finally, although this thesis focuses mainly on the role of socioeconomic status, its results suggest that it in order to effectively improve overall population health, policy instruments for improved lifestyle habits should also consider the role of other and in some cases perhaps more important socio-demographic factors, including in particular age and gender.
Source: BIBSYS Brage (BIBSYS (Norway))
Author: Arnstein Øvrum
Language: English
Subfield: Health
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2806792889