Income & job role

A single testing rate can hide how unevenly testing is distributed across income bands. In this survey, a full-body diagnostic panel is reported by 54.3% of responses at ₹40 lakh and above, against 15.6% below ₹3 lakh. The gap also appears within engineering and software development, so it is not confined to a comparison between different job-function labels.

That raises a question about how care is used, without answering why the gap exists. The survey records whether someone reports having a panel, not whether it was offered, who paid or what made attendance possible. Higher income also does not point the same way on every behaviour: exercise is more common, but drinking is too, while stress and sleep follow less consistent patterns. These are differences between response groups, with age and job mix still relevant to their interpretation.

A blood panel is 3.5 times more likely at the top of the payroll#

The bottom of the staircase matters as much as the top. The two lowest bands are level within a fifth of a point, 15.6% and 15.7%, and between them they are 2,884 of the 7,047 responses in this cut, more than a third of everyone in it. Uptake does not begin to move until the ₹6 to 10 lakh band, and it climbs from there.

The obvious question is whether this is really job mix rather than pay. The survey records one job-function label for each response, so the same ladder can be read inside a single function. Among engineers and software developers alone, the largest function in this survey, it runs almost end to end.

An engineer in the top income band is more than four times as likely to report a panel as an engineer in the bottom one. The top band here is 52 answers, so read that exact figure with care. The comparison holds the job-function label constant, but does not adjust for age or establish that duties and seniority are the same. The Preventive Care page carries the same income staircase across the whole survey.

The sample is concentrated in lower-middle income bands and software roles.

WHI 2025 reported a preventive-testing gradient too, across these same seven brackets and rising the same way. It called its measure basic health monitoring in one place, covering annual check-ups, regular blood work and early detection of chronic conditions, and annual full-body testing in another, and the questionnaire wording behind it is not in the saved report. This edition counts a single box on a list of things done in the last year. Neither the rates nor the size of the gaps carry across two measures described that differently. The gradient itself does.

Awareness of the new weight-loss drugs follows the same line#

26.1% of the 6,968 responses that answered the GLP-1 question had at least heard of medicines such as Ozempic, Mounjaro and Wegovy. Split by income, that awareness climbs from 20.9% in the ₹3 to 6 lakh band to 54.0% at ₹40 lakh and above. The under ₹3 lakh band sits off that line, at 24.9%, above the band immediately above it.

Awareness is not use. Only a small minority of the survey has considered or taken one of these drugs, and the GLP-1 Awareness page reads the full question and what people have actually done about it. What the income split shows is that knowing an option exists is distributed the same way the reported panel is.

Exercise moves with income all the way. Stress and sleep stop early#

Answers across the eight rows: exercise 7,506, high stress 7,345, short sleep 7,567. The exercise column counts responses reporting no day in a usual week with at least 30 minutes of exercise, which is not the same as reporting no movement at all. Short sleep means the two shortest answer bands the survey offers, under 5 hours and 5 to 6 hours. High stress means a self-rating of 7 or more out of 10 for the previous week.

Only one of the three moves cleanly. The share reporting no qualifying exercise day falls at every income step, from 36.7% in the lowest band to 19.3% in the highest, which is the income and movement gradient the Movement & Exercise page sets out in full.

High stress falls most across the lower income bands. It drops from 45.3% to 39.6% across the bottom three bands, then ranges between 37.2% and 38.7% from the ₹10 to 15 lakh band upwards. The top band reads 8.1 points below the bottom one. On the same 7-out-of-10 threshold, WHI 2025 read 42.1% in its lowest band against 45.3% here.

Short sleep does something different again. It falls from 37.0% to 25.0% by the ₹15 to 25 lakh band, holds at 25.2%, and then reads 30.8% at ₹40 lakh and above. The higher short-sleep share at the top is an observed difference, but that band has the smallest base, 146 answers, so its rate is less precise than those of the larger groups. The Sleep page holds the full duration distribution.

Drinking rises with income too#

Any alcohol use more than doubles across the income range, 26.6% at the bottom against 59.6% at the top, though not in a straight line. The ₹15 to 25 lakh band reads 42.1%, below the 45.1% of the band beneath it.

The weekly line is the more revealing one. Drinking weekly or more sits between 7.4% and 9.5% from ₹3 lakh all the way to ₹40 lakh, and then reads 14.9% in the top band, 1.7 times the band below it and 2.4 times the lowest band. That is a step rather than a slope. The Alcohol page covers the frequency question in full.

Caffeine has a similar shape, with two steps rather than one. Three or more caffeinated drinks on a workday sits between 14.4% and 15.0% from the bottom of the range up to ₹15 to 25 lakh, then reads 18.2% at ₹25 to 40 lakh and 25.5% in the top band, on 141 answers.

Job function separates the substances more widely than it separates stress#

Across these sixteen functions nicotine use runs from 11.8% in laboratory and diagnostics roles to 32.9% in customer success and account management, and any alcohol use from 25.0% in that same laboratory group to 62.3% in that same customer success group. Sales and business development reads 27.0% on nicotine against engineering's 12.5%, on 725 and 2,136 answers. Nicotine use here excludes answers of "Non-user" and "Quit in the last 12 months". It includes nicotine replacement products as well as cigarettes, so a counted answer does not necessarily mean tobacco use.

The two rankings share their end rows and disagree in the middle. General management and strategy is sixth of sixteen on nicotine, at 21.8%, and second on drinking, at 55.6%. Customer support and service is third on nicotine, at 23.9%, and ninth on drinking, at 39.7%. The table is sorted on nicotine, not on both columns.

Income does not sort nicotine the same way. Nicotine use by income reads 15.1% in the lowest band and 16.3% in the highest, and its highest reading, 19.9%, is in the middle of the range.

Stress orders the same sixteen functions differently. The nicotine and stress orders share their end rows, customer success at one end and laboratory and diagnostics at the other, and scramble everything between them. Marketing and content is sixth lowest of the sixteen for nicotine and second highest for stress. People ops is fifth lowest and third highest. Across these sixteen functions stress runs from 35.7% to 51.9%, a range of 16.2 points, and ten of them sit between 38% and 44%. Engineering, much the largest function in the table, is near the bottom at 36.0%, and even that is just under sixteen points below the top. The exercise column produces a third order, from 22.4% in product management to 36.8% in operations and supply chain.

So the substances spread these sixteen functions over 21 points on nicotine and 37 on drinking, against 16 points on the stress rating. No function among the sixteen reads below 35.7% on high stress. The Nicotine page carries the rest of the nicotine question, including how its categories are built, and the Age & Generation page carries stress and sleep by age.

WHI 2025 put the calmest income band at ₹25 to 40 lakh, on 28.8% high stress. This edition reads 38.7% in that band and 37.2% in the band above it, and all seven income bands read higher. Across the ten job functions both editions report, the spread has closed from 18.5 points to 9.8.