Smoking, low vegetable use and physical inactivity explained a substantial part of educational level differences in cardiovascular and all-cause mortality among men and women. Socioeconomic trends in these behaviours are of crucial importance in determining whether socioeconomic mortality differences will widen or narrow in the future.

When estimating population level changes in health indicators, the declining response rate, especially if also the characteristics of non-respondents are changing may bias the outcome. There is evidence that survey response rates are declining in many countries. It is also known that respondents and non-respondents differ in their socio-economic and demographic status as well as in their health and health behaviours. There is no information about the changes in the differences between respondents and non-respondents over time. Our purpose was to investigate the changes over time in the differences between respondents and non-respondents in respect to their sex, age, marital status and educational level. The data from the Finnish Adult Health Behaviour Survey (1978-2002) was used. The response rate declined over the past 25 years for both men and women in all age groups. The decline was faster among men than women, and also faster in younger age groups than older age groups. There is a marked difference in the response rate between married and non-married persons but it did not change over time. Also the response rate between different educational levels differed for both men and women, and this difference increased over the years. The declining response rate and at the same time occurring change in the non-respondent characteristics will decrease the representativeness of the results, limit the comparability of the results with other surveys, increase the bias of the trend estimates and limit the comparability of the results between population groups.

The present long-term follow-up study of DH documented significantly reduced all-cause and cerebrovascular disease mortality. Strict adherence to a GFD, less smoking and hypercholesterolaemia may play a role in the observed health benefit.

Background: Studies from different time periods have shown that consumption of vegetables is more common in higher socioeconomic groups and among women. However, there are only few studies of changes of socioeconomic differences in vegetable consumption over time. Our aim was to determine whether socioeconomic differences, measured by educational level and household income, in daily vegetable consumption have increased, decreased or been stable over the last two decades among Finnish men and women. Methods: Data on daily consumption of fresh vegetables were derived from repeated annual cross-sectional surveys performed among representative samples of Finnish working aged (15-64 years) population. Data from the years 1979-2002 were linked with data on education and household income from Statistics Finland. Those under 25 years and all students were excluded, giving a total of 69 383 respondents. The main analyses were conducted with logistic regression. Results: Daily consumption of fresh vegetables became overall more prevalent during the study period. Daily consumption of fresh vegetables was more common among those with higher education and higher income during the whole study period. Both educational level and household income differences in daily vegetable consumption slightly narrowed since 1979 among men and women. Conclusions: Women with high socioeconomic position have been initial trend setters, but the prevalence of daily consumers of vegetables in these groups has not increased since the early 1990s. The prevalence of daily consumption of fresh vegetables has increased more in lower educational and income groups during the 1980s and 1990s along with narrowing socioeconomic differences.

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