Researchers tracked municipal employees in Helsinki, Finland, who were between 40 and 60 years old when the study began. They followed these workers from the year 2000 through 2022 to look at how their job class and daily habits influenced cardiovascular disease events. These events included hospitalizations, long-term sickness absence, disability pensions, and death.
The group with lower occupational class had a slightly higher rate of heart disease events compared to the higher class. Unhealthy behaviors such as smoking, poor diet, and not enough physical activity were more common in the lower class, while heavy alcohol use was an exception. Insufficient physical activity stood out as the strongest predictor of heart disease risk overall.
Interestingly, unhealthy diet was more strongly linked to heart disease in the higher occupational class. While these habits accounted for about 40% of the risk difference between job groups, the majority of the inequality could not be explained by lifestyle alone. This highlights that broader social and economic factors likely contribute significantly to health gaps between different job classes.
Readers should understand that while changing habits is important, fixing diet and exercise alone will not close the gap in heart disease rates between social groups. More research is needed to fully understand the other causes of these health differences.
