An international research team has discovered that low socioeconomic status, primarily characterized by poverty and limited education, directly correlates with accelerated biological aging. This pattern begins to manifest as early as childhood, according to a study published in the journal Nature Human Behavior.
A group of scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, working alongside colleagues at Columbia University, examined data from 140 research papers covering approximately 66,000 individuals aged 0 to 86 years across 23 countries. The pace of aging was measured using epigenetic clocks—mathematical models that analyze the nature of molecular changes in DNA and determine how biologically “aged” a person’s body is compared to their chronological age.
An individual with slower biological aging tends to look and feel younger than their years, while those experiencing accelerated aging often encounter age-related diseases earlier than expected. Children from impoverished households exhibit a higher biological age than their wealthier peers. A similar pattern is also observed among adults.
The authors note that poverty and other adverse social factors reinforce each other. This is clearly captured by modern, refined epigenetic clocks.
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