Sep 05, 2014 11:08 AM EDT By J Baulkman, UniversityHerald Reporter

Poor health habits could be linked to financial insecurity, according to a recent study.

Researchers found that financial hardship, or feeling that one can't make ends meet, may be more predictive of health risk behaviors than actual income levels for people with low incomes.

"The poorer you are, the less healthy you're likely to be," Amy Harley, lead author of the study and associate professor of community and behavioral health promotion at the Zilber School of Public Health at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, said in a statement.

For the study, Harley and her colleagues took a nuanced approach to search for patterns of health behaviors among low-income groups.

The research team examined data from a 2005-2009 survey of 828 adult residents living in three Boston-area cities. Age, race/ethnicity, gender, education, country of birth, language spoken and perceived financial hardships were identified as potential predictors of three health behaviors: eating, sedentary behavior and smoking habits.

As a measure of financial hardship, participants reported how cash-strapped they felt at the end of each month. Those with some money left at the end of each month were significantly more likely to eat better and to report no smoking than those who felt they didn't have enough to make ends meet. The relationship between perceived financial hardship and total time sitting (sedentary behavior) was not significant.

Based on the findings, men were significantly more likely to report less healthy eating and more total sitting than women and were twice as likely to report current smoking. Harley observed that there has been less attention to men's health than in women's and hopes that these findings might increase interest in men's health.

Cheri Wilson, researchers and assistant scientist at the Center for Health Disparities Solutions at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said the findings move the discussion of health and poverty beyond viewing low socioeconomic status as the sole cause of disparities.

She noted that people often view health choices made by those lacking money as poor personal decisions. In fact, people's health choices strongly reflect the environments in which they "live, work and pray."

Wilson said the results also highlight the need for health promotion leaders to consider diverse predictors of health behaviors.

The findings were recently published in the American Journal of Health Promotion.

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