Adults Without Landlines Live Unhealthier Lives Than Those With Landlines

Adults without landlines are more likely to be smokers and heavy drinkers. "Undercounting wireless users can skew crucial health survey information....And, as it turns out, the NHIS has found several statistically significant differences between wireless-only and landline homes. Adults in wireless-only households are, for example, less likely to have received their flu shots and are more likely to have faced financial barriers to health care. They're also more likely to smoke and drink heavily. And those correlations stick even when researchers control for factors such as age, income level and home ownership status....That's not to suggest, he said, that going wireless-only is a risky behavior." Hayley Tsukayama in The Washington Post.