A new study has shown that young, white, affluent women are more likely to get the skin cancer melanoma than other social or ethnic groups.

The study involved 3,800 white girls and women in California, ages 15-39, who had been diagnosed with melanoma.

The socioeconomic status was determined using census data on the household incomes and education levels of the women’s respective neighborhoods. And while so-called lifestyle cancers, like lung cancer, tend to affect lower-income populations, the study found that the wealthier women had a much higher incidence of melanoma.

According to MSNBC, “In the wealthiest 20 percent of California neighborhoods, four or five out of 100,000 young white women were diagnosed with melanoma over the 5-year period from 1998-2002. For the poorest group, the rate was less than one in 100,000 over the same period.”

Melanoma is now the most common form of cancer for young adults ages 25-29, and is the second most common form of cancer for young adults aged 15-29.  Studies have found that women are being diagnosed with the cancer at a far higher rate than men are, and that could potentially be due to the idea that women are more likely than men to use indoor tanning beds. Melanoma risks increase up to 75% for those that use indoor tanning beds.

Tags: skin cancer, melanoma
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