AAMC Official Guide CARS Question #2

[Mr. otcoD]

In the passage: yes it does literally say: "As you descend the SES ladder in Westernized societies, people are more likely to drink excessively or smoke."
BUT literally in the next paragraph, it says "What is surprising, though, is how little of the SES gradient these risk and protective factors explain."

So how can he agree with what he said? Didn't this next paragraph (1st sentence of paragraph 5) literally shift his view on that?

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[aldol16]

No, it's not contradictory because the first statement establishes an observed trend and the second statement says that that observed trend does not explain the socioeconomic gradient well. In other words, you could say that as the affluence of your neighborhood increases, the crime rate decreases. That's a trend that is, in this example, supported by the statistics. But based solely on that, you wouldn't be able to say that crime rate explains, or causes, the affluence of your neighborhood. In fact, it's likely the other way around and that's one of the main points of this passage - namely, that it is not clear whether poor health causes SES or the other way around (fourth paragraph).