Socioeconomic factors are important determinants of health. Having access to material and social resources and being able to participate in society are important for maintaining good health. Social inequalities and disadvantage are the main reason for unfair and avoidable differences in health outcomes and life expectancy across groups in society.
Generally, people in lower socioeconomic groups are at greater risk of poor health, have higher rates of illness, disability and death, and live shorter lives than people from higher socioeconomic groups (Mackenbach 2015). The higher a person’s socioeconomic position, the healthier they tend to be—a phenomenon often termed the ‘social gradient of health’. See Social determinants of health and Social determinants and Indigenous health.
This page compares socioeconomic groups on health measures across 4 key health areas, focusing on people in the lowest and highest socioeconomic groups, where differences are usually large. It highlights that for almost all health measures, people from lower socioeconomic groups in Australia fare worse.
Measuring socioeconomic position—the Index of Relative Socio-economic Disadvantage
Socioeconomic position can be measured using an individual characteristic, such as a person’s level of income, education or occupation, or it may be constructed as a composite measure using a range of socioeconomic information.
In the AIHW’s reporting on health across socioeconomic groups, a composite measure of socioeconomic position known as the Index of Relative Socio-economic Disadvantage (IRSD) is frequently used (ABS 2018).
The IRSD classifies individuals according to the socioeconomic characteristics of the area in which they live. It scores each area by summarising attributes of the population, such as low income, low educational attainment, high unemployment and jobs in relatively unskilled occupations. Areas can then be ranked according to their score. The population living in the 20% of areas with the greatest overall level of disadvantage is described as the ‘lowest socioeconomic areas’. The 20% at the other end of the scale—the top fifth—is described as the ‘highest socioeconomic areas’.
Note that the IRSD reflects the overall or average level of disadvantage of the population of an area; it does not show how individuals living in the same area differ from each other in their socioeconomic position.
On most health risk factors, adults living in the lowest socioeconomic areas fared worse than adults in the highest socioeconomic areas. Based on the Australian Bureau of Statistics 2017–18 National Health Survey, it is estimated that adults in the lowest socioeconomic areas were:
- 3.3 times as likely to smoke daily (AIHW 2020) (Figure 1)
- 1.6 times as likely to be obese (AIHW 2019k)
- 1.3 times as likely to be insufficiently active (AIHW 2019i)
- 1.2 times as likely to have uncontrolled high blood pressure (AIHW 2019g).
Adults in the lowest socioeconomic areas were at similar lifetime risk of harm from drinking alcohol to adults in the highest socioeconomic areas (AIHW 2020).
More recent data for daily tobacco smoking and alcohol consumption levels, including for people living in the highest and lowest socioeconomic areas , is available in the National Drug Strategy Household Survey 2019.