Unhealthy Choices May Not Be Your Fault: How Poverty Shapes Our Lives

Unhealthy Choices May Not Be Your Fault: How Poverty Shapes Our Lives

Smoking, drinking, pulling all-night benders. If these sound familiar to you, you are not alone. Researchers are starting to see the links between activities that harm us in the long run, with poor socioeconomic status.

Researchers in Iran surveyed 3,518 adults from 2024 to 2025 to see how socioeconomic status (SES), primarily based on household income affects the likelihood of being embroiled in various unhealthy behaviors.

The researchers were interested in finding out which behaviors were more frequent in those living in lower socioeconomic status.

Main Findings

The research found that people in the poorest group showed significantly higher rates of:

• Physical inactivity: 53.4% vs 41.2% in the richest

• Infrequent dental flossing: 63.7% vs 30.1%

• Infrequent tooth brushing: 27.4% vs 8.5%

• Poor sleep quality: 27.2% vs 9.7%

• Skipping breakfast: 58.2% vs 47.6%

• Alcohol consumption, however, was more common among the richest group (22.5%) than the poorest (10.7%)

• Smoking rates were somewhat similar but still higher among the poorest (26.5%) than the richest (21.2%)

Measuring Inequality

In order to get the most accurate results, the researchers used two methods:

• Inequality ratios: Comparing prevalence in poorest vs richest.

• Concentration Index (CI): A statistic that shows whether unhealthy behaviors are more common among the poor (negative CI) or the rich (positive CI).

The researchers found that most unhealthy behaviors (physical inactivity, poor sleep, poor tooth brushing, flossing) had a negative CI, meaning they were significantly more common in poorer groups.

Alcohol consumption was the only vice that had a positive CI, meaning it was the only unhealthy practice in their initial list that was more likely to be practiced by the affluent.

They also looked at differences by sex:

• Physical inactivity was more skewed toward poorer men.