Childhood socioeconomic status and changes in biological aging across mid-to-later life

Lower childhood socioeconomic status (SES) has been associated with markers of advanced biological aging. Much of this work, however, is cross-sectional or focuses on single markers of biological aging. The current study examined whether childhood SES is associated with change in a multisystem composite of blood-based biomarkers of aging across a 14-year period from mid-to-later life. Participants in the longitudinal Adult Health and Behavior (AHAB) project (N = 674, 45.4% female, mean age at Wave 1 = 45.5 years) retrospectively reported at Wave 1 parental education and occupation, which were combined to calculate childhood SES using the Hollingshead Index. They also provided blood at Wave 1 and Wave 2, which was assayed for eight markers of biological aging and combined into a single composite, informed by the work of Justice and colleagues (Justice et al., 2018): insulin, IGF-1, GDF15, NT-proBNP, cystatin C, IL-6, TNF-α, and CRP. Regression models tested the association between childhood SES and residualized change in the biological aging composite, adjusting for Wave 1 age, sex, and time between waves. Lower childhood SES was associated with a larger increase in the biological aging composite across a 14-year period (β = -0.13, p = .001), and in sensitivity analyses, this association remained when further controlling for adult SES (β = -0.11, p = .006) and childhood trauma (β = -0.11, p = .008). These findings suggest that relative disadvantage in childhood may accelerate the rate of biological aging in mid-to-later life, providing a possible pathway to increased risk for poorer late life health.