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It is well known that the experience of poor health depends on adverse social and material circumstances and on unhealthy behaviour. In 1990 a British study asserted that privileged people gain more health benefit from a healthy lifestyle than do deprived people. In the present study this assertion was taken as a hypothesis, assuming statistical interaction between circumstances and health behaviour. The combined effect of these variables was studied in Denmark. Data was obtained from a 1987 national Health and Morbidity Survey; variables were selected to correspond closely with those in the earlier British study. The analysis included a multivariate analysis of variance. The results show that health-related behaviour has a positive effect on health both for those who are deprived and those who are not deprived, which is at variance with the findings of the British study. It confirms earlier analyses of Danish and Dutch data.

This paper derives its main hypothesis from results of the Health and Lifestyle Survey as reported in Blaxter's monograph Health and Lifestyles. In this book it is argued that in a favourable social environment a healthy lifestyle matters but in a unfavourable social environment a healthy lifestyle does not make much difference. This hypothesis is tested with data from health surveys from the Netherlands and Denmark. The Dutch data showed a highly significant relationship of unfavourable material and social circumstances with both poor health and an unhealthy lifestyle. In turn, an unhealthy lifestyle was also related to poor health. The Danish study showed similar, although generally weaker, associations. When the British findings would apply to Denmark and the Netherlands, we should find an interaction between material and social circumstances and health related behaviour in their association with health and illness. Neither the Dutch nor the Danish data showed an interaction of the type that the British study assumes. The paper concludes with a discussion of the reasons why the findings from the UK could not be replicated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]