ETSU’s Center for Rural Health Research recently published an article from a study on poverty and health in the “Southern Medical Journal.” The article – authored by Kate Beatty, Dean Randy Wykoff, Olivia Egen and John Dreyzehner – explores the relationship that poverty and health outcomes have to each other.
According to a news release from the Office of University Relations, “The study found people living in the wealthiest quintile lived on average two and a half to four years longer and had lower rates of all unhealthy behaviors and health outcomes investigated compared with those in the poorest quintile.”
Since poverty and unhealthy outcomes are linked, the question arises: Which causes which? It’s the classic chicken or egg inquiry, but I don’t think the answer is a simple “either/or,” but rather that each one feeds the other.
To begin, socioeconomic status is a major determinate of health for a reason. For example, those born into a poor home are usually less capable of affording the top-notch health care as well as the healthiest food from the grocery store. This is due both to simply lacking funds and sometimes to geographical location, as the rural poor are often miles from a quality health care facility. This helps us see how poverty can fuel poor health.
On the other hand, it is not difficult to see how poor health feeds poverty. Often poor health decisions are expensive ones. Smoking multiple packs of cigarettes a week is not only detrimental to your health, but it is also ridiculously expensive. Alcoholic lifestyles are unhealthy, claim thousands of victims and are not cheap. Not to mention the problem of illegal drug addictions that charge boatloads to get people high. This illustrates why the cycle of poverty and unhealthy outcomes seems unbreakable. The question arises, then, as to which of these problems we should combat, if we cannot influence both. But again, the issue is more complicated than it seems.
We must account for the fact the sometimes – not always – but often, people are willfully poor and willfully unhealthy. Since there are those who will not demonstrate ambition in a career or just choose to stay on welfare, they are in effect deciding to remain poor. Since it is common knowledge that smoking cigarettes, becoming an alcoholic and intaking illegal drugs are unhealthy behaviors, those who engage in them most likely do so knowing the risks. Because our economy allows people to climb the socioeconomic ladder and refrain from unhealthy behaviors if they want to, how can we help people that may not want to be helped?
As far as the poverty problem, we aren’t helping people by giving them government welfare so they can live comfortably without making a living for themselves – and at the expense of working Americans’ tax dollars. Diminishing or removing welfare would not only help the economy by forcing folks relying on welfare to earn their living, but I imagine it would also improve their health status. The responsibility of caring for oneself financially may transfer to the caring for one’s health as well, not to mention the fact that people tend to take better care of things they have worked for as opposed to things that are given to them. This solution may well lead many both out of poverty and out of unhealthy behaviors.
Practically speaking, since I don’t expect to see that happen any time soon, in the meantime we can continue to educate people on the risks of unhealthy behaviors as well as on the economic opportunities at their disposal for the betterment of themselves as well as the rest of society. In doing so, I expect we will slowly see our country transformed into a better place.
