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International Journal of Epidemiology 2003;32:975-977
© International Epidemiological Association 2003

Special Theme: Mental Health

Commentary: Personality and the socioeconomic–health gradient

Richie Poulton1 and Avshalom Caspi2

1 Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Research Unit, Department of Preventive and Social Medicine, Dunedin School of Medicine, University of Otago, New Zealand.
2 Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London, UK and Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA. E-mail: richiep@gandalf.otago.ac.nz

The first 10% of the full text of this article appears below.

The socioeconomic (SES) gradient in health—whereby higher position equates to better health—spans both time and place and is found for almost all diseases and many health risk behaviours. The near universality of this phenomenon has led to a search for more fundamental causes. Although differences in material resources and/or psychosocial attributes have been postulated, neither can satisfactorily explain the ubiquity of the socioeconomic–health gradient.1 In this edition of the International Journal of Epidemiology, Pulkki and colleagues2 ask if adolescent personality traits can explain the inverse relation between selected cardiovascular health risk behaviours and educational achievement. Their longitudinal study shows that a set of ‘Type A’-like personality traits predict educational attainment (a component of SES) and accounts for part of the SES gradient in health . . . [Full Text of this Article]


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