Poverty dynamics in Germany: Evidence on the relationship between persistent poverty and health behavior

摘要

Previous studies have found poverty to be related to lower levels of health due to poor health behavior such as unhealthy eating, smoking or less physical activity. Longer periods of poverty seem to be especially harmful for individual health behavior. Studies have shown that poverty has a dynamic character. Moreover, poverty is increasingly regarded as being a multidimensional construct and one that considers more aspects than income alone. Against this background this paper analyzes the relationship between health behavior and persistent spells of income poverty as well as a combined poverty indicator using data of the German Socio-Economic Panel (2000-2010). Next to cross-sectional logistic regression models we estimate fixed-effects models to analyze the effect of persistent poverty on dietary behavior, tobacco consumption, and physical activity.