Poverty Gets Under the Skin: UK Evidence from Biological Aging

Do adverse economic conditions make us older? Age acceleration can be measured by epigenetic clocks, which compare an individual’s biological age to their chronological age. In a representative sample of UK adults from the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS) we related age acceleration to a number of aspects of poverty. Contemporaneous poverty, both in terms of incidence and intensity, is associated with faster aging. Using the panel aspect of the UKHLS, poverty scars: those who have been poor in the past also age faster, even if they are no longer in poverty. Age acceleration is potentially reversible, so that public policy can make people biologically younger.