The importance of social and economic conditions for people's health has been receiving more and more attention during the past 10 years. The question that is raised in this study is if the link between socio-economic factors in society, seen in the more composite sense, and cardiovascular mortality are dependent on different socio-geographical contexts? Two contextual situations are used; one concerns the dimension which places the analysis in an urban-rural context and the other, the dimension placing it in a context which describes people's forms of work.

The study is based on aggregated data on the social and economic conditions for men in the municipalities in Sweden for the period 1983–1987.

The results show that the link between various dimensions of the socio-economic structure and IHD rates is more pronounced in the urban and white-collar community types than in rural and blue-collar communities. In the community type where the links are more pronounced the IHD rate is lower and in the type where the links are less pronounced the IHD rate is higher.

The results are discussed in relation to different theoretical perspectives.