Top 10 things I’m buying to punish my husband.

1. A lobster from his LEAST favorite restaurant. $20

2. A new purse. $395

3. A toaster. $380

4. The new David Sedaris Book. (Which Dr. Mean DIDN’T buy me the last time we were at Barnes and Nobel. TAKE THAT FUCKER!) $20

..And 6 puppies. PRICELESS

My husband smokes. It’s very looserish of him.

My husband claimed to have quit smoking last July. A pack of cigarettes just fell out of his pocket. Apparently he wants to have a whole lot in common with the poorest and least educated people in our country.

I shall now go shopping…and I mean SHOPPING. (I told him I quit that too…but funnily enough, something seems to have triggered a relapse.)

Please read the following paper to learn all about what a low class fucker my husband aspires to be.

Smoking

Socioeconomic status and smoking

Analysing inequalities with multiple indicators

Mikko Laaksonen¹, Ossi Rahkonen², Sakari Karvonen³ and Eero Lahelma¹

¹ Department of Public Health, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
² Department of Social Policy, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
³ STAKES (National Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health), Helsinki, Finland

Correspondence: Mikko Laaksonen, PhD, Department of Public Health, PO Box 41, FIN-00014 University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland, tel. +358 9 191 27569, fax +358 9 191 27570, Email: mikko.t.laaksonen@helsinki.fi<!–
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Received July 2, 2003, accepted January 20, 2004

	Abstract

Top Abstract Methods Results Discussion References

Background and aims: Socioeconomic differences in smoking have been well established. While previous studies have mostly relied on one socioeconomic indicator at a time, this study examined socioeconomic differences in smoking by using several indicators that reflect different dimensions of socioeconomic position. Data and methods: Data derive from Helsinki Health Study baseline surveys conducted among the employees of the City of Helsinki in 2000 and 2001. The data include 6243 respondents aged 40–60 years (response rate 68%). Six socioeconomic indicators were used: education, occupational status, household income per consumption unit, housing tenure, economic difficulties and economic satisfaction. Their associations with current smoking were examined by fitting sequential logistic regression models. Results: All socioeconomic indicators were strongly associated with smoking among both men and women. When the indicators were examined simultaneously their associations with smoking attenuated, especially when education and occupational status were considered together, and when income and housing tenure were introduced into the models already containing education and occupational status. After mutual adjustment for all socioeconomic indicators, housing tenure and economic satisfaction remained associated with smoking in men. In women, all indicators except income and economic difficulties were inversely associated with smoking after adjustments. Conclusions: Smoking was associated with structural, material as well as perceived dimensions of socioeconomic disadvantage. Attempts to reduce smoking among the socioeconomically disadvantaged need to target several dimensions of socioeconomic position.

Keywords: education, income, occupational status, smoking, socioeconomic differences

Cigarette smoking is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in industrial societies. Over recent decades, the overall prevalence of smoking has decreased among men in many countries, whereas among women smoking has remained at the same level or even increased.¹ However, these changes have not happened equally across all population groups. In most industrial societies smoking has increasingly been concentrated among the socioeconomically disadvantaged. This is particularly true for northern European men, but also women and southern Europeans seem to be moving towards a similar pattern.^2,3

Various explanations for the socioeconomic differences in smoking have been put forward. These include lack of knowledge, scarce material resources and psychosocial stress due to an unfavourable social position and poor material conditions.^4,5 These explanations may relate differently to the various indicators that have been used to measure socioeconomic position. Education, occupational status and income as well as other measures of material living conditions have all been found to be inversely associated with smoking.^3,4,6 While each of these indicators is likely to reflect one’s position in socioeconomic hierarchy, they all also have specific characteristics that may be suggestive about the different explanations for the association between socioeconomic position and smoking.

***********You can read the complete paper here.