Health lifestyle behaviour and socio-demographic characteristics. A study of Varna, Glasgow and Edinburgh

In this paper a lifestyle perspective is taken to study the various influences on four health related behaviours, i.e. cigarette smoking, diet behaviour, alcohol use and exercise. Of interest is how these behaviours are distributed over four socio-demographic indicators, i.e. the respondents gender, educational level, employment status and age. As a third factor the respondentʹs city of residence, Varna in Bulgaria and Glasgow and Edinburgh in Scotland, is taken into consideration. Data collected by telephone from 268 respondents from Varna, 827 respondents from Glasgow and 275 respondents from Edinburgh are considered. Large differences in the prevalence of health behaviours are found, with respondents in Varna behaving least healthily and respondents in Edinburgh behaving most healthily, and this is also true at sub-group level. Alcohol use is the exception, and here the opposite relationship between health behaviour and city of residence is found. Females generally behave more healthily than males, however, this pattern is not consistent for all health behaviours. Better educated and employed respondents behave in a more healthy way compared with less well educated and unemployed respondents, and this is true in all three cities, with the difference being particularly large in Scotland. An ‘economic’ and a ‘self-care’ explanation are put forward to explain the patterns observed but both explanations are found wanting. It is proposed that integrating various theoretical models is necessary to further develop our understanding of health lifestyle behaviour.