People from lower socio-economic groups are more likely to smoke, drink alcohol excessively, have less physical exercise and unhealthier diets. It IS likely that such unhealthy behaviours form part of the pathways underlying social inequalities in health. Poor people in the UK are less likely than those who are well off to eat a good diet, more likely to have a sedentary lifestyle, more likely to be obese, and more likely to be regularly drunk (Figure 3, from (Colhoun and Prescott-Clarke 1996). Some studies have analysed the contribution of such health behaviours to explaining the social gradient in health and have found that a substantial social gradient in health still remains even after adjusting for such (un)healthy lifestyles (Marmot et al 1978). So there may be other social determinants of health not directly related to health behaviours, as suggested by the pathways through work and material factors in Figure 1. Some evidence of these other pathways (shown in Figure 2) is discussed in sections