Financial hardship may accelerate aging
Research shows that adults who spend as few as 4 years in economic hardship could be at risk of accelerated aging in comparison with adults who do not experience periods of poverty.
The term accelerated aging describes people who are physically less capable at an earlier age than others at the same life stage. These people may also have poorer cognitive function and higher levels of inflammatory markers in their blood.
Scientists associate high detection of markers of inflammation, such as C-reactive protein (CRP) and IL-6, with many conditions, including infection and cancer.
An aging population, particularly in western societies, means that healthcare costs disproportionately affect older adults. This phenomenon has led to a drive-in promoting healthy aging.
As such, researchers from the Department of Public Health at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark conducted a study to investigate whether late-middle-aged adults are adversely affected by economic hardship compared with adults of the same age who are not experiencing financial problems.
Results appear in the European Journal of Ageing.
Studying financial hardship and aging
The benchmark for economic hardship in this study included people with relatively low income. In this case, those with incomes 60% less than the national average across 22 years.
The researchers studied 5,575 adults in the late-middle-aged population, of whom 18% experienced poverty in the period 1987-2008. The team, which was led by Rikke Lund, studied aging by analyzing both physical and cognitive function, including chair rise, grip strength, jump, and balance.
The researchers found that people who have lived in relative poverty for 4 years or more did not perform as well as the people who have never experienced financial hardship. They also found that those living with financial issues had heightened levels of inflammatory markers in their blood.
Their findings suggest that moving out of economic hardship protects against accelerated aging and that increasing probability of economic hardship results in the opposite and leads to a rise in blood CRP levels.
Interestingly, experiencing poverty earlier in life for a shorter period did not indicate accelerated aging. However, entering a period of financial difficulties in later life as a result of job loss was a significant contributing factor.
This suggests that financial hardship during early life due to being in higher education or taking on short term contract jobs is not as stressful as poverty in later life. It also suggests that accelerated aging could be time sensitive.
