Data from the 1990 National Health Interview Survey’s Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Supplement, involving 40,335 US adults, were linked to prospective National Death Index mortality data through 1997, to determine whether smoking, alcohol use, and physical inactivity moderate the relationship between perceived stress and the risk of death in the US population as a whole and across socioeconomic strata. High baseline levels of former smoking and physical inactivity increased the impact of stress on mortality in the general population as well as among people with low socioeconomic status (SES), but not those with middle or high SES.
