Does education confer a culture of healthy behavior? Smoking and drinking patterns in Danish twins
Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
More education is associated with healthier smoking and drinking behaviors. Most analyses of effects of education focus on mean levels. Few studies have compared variance in health-related behaviors at different levels of education or analyzed how education impacts underlying genetic and environmental sources of health-related behaviors. This study explored these influences. In a 2002 postal questionnaire, 21,522 members of the Danish Twin Registry, born during 1931-1982, reported smoking and drinking habits. The authors used quantitative genetic models to examine how these behaviors' genetic and environmental variances differed with level of education, adjusting for birth-year effects. As expected, more education was associated with less smoking, and average drinking levels were highest among the most educated. At 2 standard deviations above the mean educational level, variance in smoking and drinking was about one-third that among those at 2 standard deviations below, because fewer highly educated people reported high levels of smoking or drinking. Because shared environmental variance was particularly restricted, one explanation is that education created a culture that discouraged smoking and heavy drinking. Correlations between shared environmental influences on education and the health behaviors were substantial among the well-educated for smoking in both sexes and drinking in males, reinforcing this notion.
Original language | English |
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Journal | American Journal of Epidemiology |
Volume | 173 |
Issue number | 1 |
Pages (from-to) | 55-63 |
Number of pages | 9 |
ISSN | 0002-9262 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Jan 2011 |
- Adolescent, Adult, Aged, Alcohol Drinking, Denmark, Diseases in Twins, Educational Status, Female, Health Behavior, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Questionnaires, Retrospective Studies, Smoking, Twins, Young Adult
Research areas
ID: 33184689