The Type of Cancer You Develop May Depend on Your Socioeconomic Status: The Role of Poverty

Socioeconomic status doesn't just impact a person's lifestyle; it may also affect their health. Scientists have found that certain cancers are more concentrated in areas with high poverty, while other cancers arise more often in wealthier regions. The findings reveal a bit more about how different types of cancers are more common when certain environmental factors are put into play.

Overall, socioeconomic status isn't related to cancer risk; however, it may influence the type of cancer a person may develop. In order to take a closer look at this phenomenon, the researchers compared people living in areas with the highest poverty with those living in areas with the lowest poverty. In all, the scientists assigned nearly three million tumors diagnosed between 2005 and 2009 from 16 states plus Los Angeles into one of four groupings based on the poverty rate at the time of diagnosis.

So what did they find? It turns out that there was a negligible association between cancer incidence and poverty; this means that poverty doesn't have anything to do with whether or not you'll develop cancer in the first place. Instead, it just influences the type of cancer developed. For example, the researchers found that Kaposi sarcoma and cancers of the larynx, cervix, penis and liver were more likely to develop in the poorest neighborhoods. In contrast, melanoma, thyroid, other non-epithelial skin, and testis cancers were more likely to develop in the wealthiest neighborhoods.

"At first glance, the effects seem to cancel one another out," said Francis Boscoe, one of the researchers, in a news release. "But the cancers more associated with poverty have lower incidence and higher mortality, and those associated with wealth have higher incidence and lower mortality. When it comes to cancer, the poor are more likely to die of the disease while the affluent are more likely to die with the disease."

The findings reveal how socioeconomic status has a large role in the types of cancers that develop. This could help inform future studies and incorporate socioeconomic status into cancer surveillance.

The findings are published in the journal Cancer.