Methods: This study used 4 repeated assessments of smoking, alcohol consumption, diet and physical activity over 24 years of follow-up to examine their role in mediating the association between socioeconomic position, measured using occupational position, and mortality from all-causes and specific causes in 9 590 men and women aged 35 to 55 years at baseline. Results: 654 participants died during the follow-up. Those with lowest occupational position had 1.60 times higher risk of death than those with highest position in analysis adjusted for sex and year of birth. For all-cause mortality, this association was attenuated by 42% (95% Confidence Interval (CI) 21%, 94%) when health behaviours assessed at baseline were entered into the model and by 72% (95% CI 42%, 154%) when health behaviours were entered as time dependent covariates. The corresponding attenuations were 29% (95% CI 11%, 54%) and 45% (95% CI 24%, 79%) for cardiovascular mortality and 61% (95% CI 16%, 425%) and 94% (95% CI 35%, 595%) for non-cancer noncardiovascular mortality. There was no association between occupational position and cancer mortality so no further analyses were undertaken. The difference between the baseline and longitudinal assessments was mostly due to an increased explanatory power of diet, physical activity and to a lesser extent, alcohol consumption. The role of smoking, the strongest mediator in these analyses, did not much differ when using baseline or repeat assessments. Conclusions: Health behaviours may be a more important explanatory mechanism for inequalities in mortality than previously estimated. According to South Africa's new constitution, access to health care is a fundamental right. In this paper we analyse the utilisation of ante-natal care services under the public health system of South Africa in order to inform policy concerned with equity of access about factors associated with the distribution of current services. We conceptualize access to care as covering three distinct but interacting dimensions of availability, affordability and acceptability. Each dimension reflects aspects of both the demand for and supply of services. We adopt WHO guidelines concerning the need for ante natal care (ANC) visits and explain variations in the number of visits among women giving birth in four selected communities, two urban and two rural.