Abstract
ObjectiveTo examine subjective and objective socioeconomic status (SSES and OSES, respectively) as predictors, cognitive abilities as confounders, and personal control perceptions as mediators of health behaviours.DesignA cross-sectional study including 197 participants aged 30–50 years, recruited from the crowd-working platform, Prolific.Main Outcome MeasureThe Good Health Practices Scale, a 16-item inventory of health behaviours.ResultsSSES was the most important predictor of health behaviours (beta = 0.19, p < 0.01). Among the OSES indicators, education (beta = 0.16, p < 0.05), but not income, predicted health behaviours. Intelligence (r = −0.16, p < 0.05) and memory (r = −0.22, p < 0.01) were negatively correlated with health-promoting behaviours, and the effect of memory was upheld in the multivariate model (beta = −0.17, p < 0.05). Personal control perceptions (mastery and constraints) did not act as mediators.ConclusionSSES predicted health behaviours beyond OSES. The effect of socioeconomic indicators was not confounded by cognitive abilities. Surprisingly, cognitive abilities were negatively associated with health-promoting behaviours. Future research should emphasise SSES as a predictor of health behaviours. Delineating the psychological mechanisms linking SSES with health behaviours would be a valuable contribution toward improved understanding of socioeconomic disparities in health behaviours.
Highlights
This study examined how individuals’ socioeconomic status (SES) is related to health behaviours, which are further related to socioeconomic disparities in health
We examined whether perceptions of personal control mediated various measures of SES, cognitive abilities, and health behaviours
Income did not correlate with Good Health Practices Scale (GHPS)
Summary
This study examined how individuals’ socioeconomic status (SES) is related to health behaviours, which are further related to socioeconomic disparities in health. We examined whether perceptions of personal control (mastery and constraints) mediated various measures of SES, cognitive abilities, and health behaviours. Individual level measures of SES include OSES, which represents an individual’s absolute levels of resources such as income or education (Galobardes et al, 2006b; Pampel et al, 2010), and SSES, which reflects a person’s perception of their position in a socioeconomic hierarchy relative to others (Singh-Manoux et al, 2003). Many studies on social disparities in health have included measures of childhood SES (e.g., parental education or income) (Galobardes et al, 2006a), most often collected from self-reports or registries. Research has demonstrated that a substantial proportion of SES disparities in health can likely be attributed to SES differences in health behaviours (Stringhini et al, 2011; Petrovic et al, 2018; Mackenbach et al, 2019)
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