From the Chicago Tri­bune comes this quick note about poverty’s effects on health. The study finds that being poor can decrease life expectancy more than smok­ing, binge drink­ing or being overweight.

Writer Jean­nine Stein of the Chicago Tri­bune gives us the med­ical study results.

In a new study, researchers looked at health and life expectancy data from the National Health Inter­view Sur­veys and the Med­ical Expen­di­ture Panel Sur­veys and came up with var­i­ous behav­ioral and social risk fac­tors that affect qual­ity of life, then used a for­mula to esti­mate the quality-adjusted years of life that would be lost.

The aver­age per­son whose income level is below 200% of the fed­eral poverty line (the bot­tom third of the country’s pop­u­la­tion) would lose an esti­mated 8.2 years of per­fect health, smok­ers 6.6 years, high school dropouts 5.1 years and the obese 4.2 years. Binge drink­ing and being unin­sured were at the bottom.

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