Going against the grain: smoking and ‘heavy’ drinking amongst the British middle classes

This paper examines the characteristics of those members of the British middle classes who 'go against the grain' of healthy living by both smoking and drinking alcohol over recommended levels. Using logistic regression procedures on GHS data, it concludes that there are significant gender differences, with men being much more likely to adopt such risky health behaviours than women. Further, the social correlates of such behaviours differ for men and women. For men, such behaviours are significantly associated with marital status, the experience of social mobility and region. For women, such behaviours are associated with the presence of dependent children, educational level and the number of hours worked in paid employment. The paper attempts some tentative interpretations of these results by drawing upon the available sociological literature.