Understanding how poverty shapes lifestyle: a qualitative study of people living in Hedmark, Norway

English abstract The aim: is to explore how living in poverty in a rural part of Norway influences the choices available to people, how these shape the lives they lead and what might be the implications of this for their health. The research aims to shed light on how, what is commonly termed 'lifestyle', health and socioeconomic status, particularly in relation to income, are interrelated in Norway, a social democratic welfare state Theory: this research uses Cockerham’s health lifestyle theory, that focuses on social practices to conceptualize the findings. According to Cockerham, lifestyle has multiple roles when it comes to health, in that it functions as a collective or shared pattern of behaviour that is normative in particular settings for the individual. Cockerham emphasises that health lifestyles are not uncoordinated behaviours of disconnected individuals, but personal routines that merge into aggregates representing different groups and classes. Method: This research has an epistemological perspective with an interpretivist view in order to understand the way people make sense of their social reality. A qualitative approach was therefore appropriate. Six semi-structured interviews with people living on low income in Hedmark, Norway in 2017 were conducted. The participants were between 30 to 70 years old, and there was one man and five women. Findings: Three themes were developed that were grounded in the data. The themes being; - Health as knowing and doing; - Feeling isolated; - Financial worries as a life sentence. The findings of this small-scale study viewed through Cockerhams health lifestyle theory give an understanding that the chances and choices the participants (and others in the same shoes) give limited opportunities for leading a healthy and fulfilling life. They experience hardship and they feel there are few options for real change. Poverty shapes and influence these peoples’ health because it constrains them in many ways and the choices they make are often not what they actually want, but they are not able to choose differently. Conclusion: What this study may add to the research literature is the clear and unambiguous findings that the participants feeling isolated and trapped in a vicious circle. The findings regarding the vicious circle also give a broader and more detailed understanding of how low income contributes to the poor health being maintained, in the way participants describe they do not manage to make changes by themselves and that the physical interact with mental health as well the other way round. The implications for public health work is that people who work in public health (or elsewhere) give people in these kinds of circumstances the help they need, such as support and understanding, time to listen and meet them where they are, and try to find out what are their individual need