A class thing

Many commentators have noted that poor health diet and habits seem more prevalent among lower income groups. They point out that those higher up the social scale are more careful about their daily lives. Fewer of them smoke cigarettes (except young people), and many eat sensibly, adding vegetables and fruit to their diet, and avoiding highly processed foods rich in salt and sugar. They tend to drink more wine than beer, and many take the trouble to exercise.

It seems to be a class thing, with better-off people leading healthier (and longer) lives, less prone to obesity and the illnesses that are associated with it. Some in government and the Civil Service seem to suppose it derives from lower educational standards and less will-power, and launch countless campaigns to alert people to the hazards of less healthy lifestyles. They use the law to make it more expensive to smoke cigarettes and to consume sugary or salty foods.

Yet surveys show that most people who smoke cigarettes and consume unhealthy foods are well-aware of the risks they are running, but continue to do it anyway. It doesn’t seem to be that they don’t know, but more that they don’t care. They have shorter time horizons and value the present more than the future.

If it is a class thing, the question to be asked is ‘Why is this so?’ Why is it that people of lower socioeconomic status behave like this?  It is a fascinating question, and part of the answer might be that for the lower social groups, life has less to offer than it does for those higher up on the social scale.

For people on benefits or in low-wage and unstimulating jobs, it might be that they see the future as offering little, and therefore value the pleasures of the present more. Even though they know that smoking cigarettes or eating junk food will be bad for them in the long term, they might value the pleasures they bring immediately because they bring reward into what they might regard as otherwise dull and drab lives.

If any of this is true, it will be challenging to speculate what might be done about it. One thought might be that this is a paternalistic question. If they want to live like that, why should anyone interfere with their choices? Yet it might be possible to contrive circumstances that will offer them more choices, while retaining their option not to take them.

Repeated surveys show that it is not being better off that brings happiness, but the opportunity to become so that achieves this. A growing, expanding society that offers the chance of rewarding jobs as an alternative to a life on benefits might be a start. It might be that when presented with the chance of a better future, that people will value it more than the present gratifications that compromise it.

It might go back to Adam Smith’s observation about “the uniform, constant and uninterrupted effort of every man to better his condition.”  Nurturing the opportunity to do that might achieve more than laws and exhortations in enabling people to value the future more than the present, and to do more to live in ways that will improve its quality.

Madsen Pirie