Living in disadvantaged neighborhoods can literally age people faster at the cellular level, with emotional distress serving as a critical link between environment and accelerated biological aging, researchers have discovered.
Scientists examined more than 1,440 Wisconsin residents and tracked their residential histories for up to five decades, measuring cumulative exposure to neighborhood disadvantage rather than just current conditions. This approach revealed how prolonged exposure to socioeconomic disadvantage triggers biological aging through what researchers call a “chains-of-risk framework”—sequential, linked exposures that accumulate over a lifetime.
Christina Kamis, a sociology professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and first author of the study, explained that the findings support the hypothesis that “prolonged exposure to contextual socioeconomic disadvantage accelerates one’s biological age, and that some but not all of this effect operates through increases in psychological symptoms.”
Using three different epigenetic clocks that measure biological aging through DNA methylation patterns, researchers found over 60% of participants were aging faster than expected. Anxiety emerged as a particularly significant factor. Wei Xu, a co-author and professor at the Medical College of Wisconsin’s Institute for Health and Humanity, noted that anxiety “appeared to be a really significant mediator between exposure and the outcome.”
About 13% of accelerated aging stemmed from overall distress, which encompassed depression, anxiety, and stress. Cumulative neighborhood disadvantage predicted both greater distress and faster biological aging, with effects persisting across all measurement methods.
See: “Neighborhood, stress may speed up aging” (January 28, 2026)
