By integrating findings from 140 studies and nearly 66,000 individuals, researchers from the Biosocial team at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in collaboration with Columbia University in New York have shown that lower socioeconomic status and exposure to discrimination are consistently associated with accelerated biological aging, measured in the epigenome.

link to open access study https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-026-02477-6

There is now abundant correlational evidence linking a range of socially stratified exposures with epigenetic clock measures of biological ageing (for example, environmental toxicants, access to healthcare and stress)6,10,57,58,59,60. Quasi-experimental studies further provide causal evidence that early-life conditions—poverty, in utero undernutrition from famine and lower educational attainment—accelerate later-life epigenetic ageing32,61,62