Health Behaviors May Account for Substantial Portion of Social Inequality in Risk of Death

It is not the socioeconomic factors. It is the personal behavior factors.

An analysis of nearly 25 years of data for about 10,000 civil servants in London finds an association between socioeconomic position and risk of death, with much of this relation accounted for by health behaviors such as smoking, alcohol consumption, diet and physical activity, according to a new study.

"The difference between the baseline only and repeated assessments of health behaviors was mostly due to an increased explanatory power of diet, physical activity, and alcohol consumption. The role of smoking, the strongest mediator in these analyses, did not change when using baseline or repeat assessments," the researchers write.

"This study suggests that health behaviors explain a substantial part of social inequalities in mortality and demonstrates the importance of taking into account changes over time in health behaviors when examining their role in social inequalities."

Yup.