Struggling to make ends meet may take a toll on more than just your wallet. Researchers at University College London have found that adults who faced persistent financial hardship throughout their lives showed poorer cognitive performance and signs of accelerated brain aging later in life. The study, published recently, tracked nearly 2,800 British participants born in 1946 from the MRC National Survey of Health and Development, examining how long-term economic difficulty affected their brain health over decades.
Participants who reported ongoing financial struggles performed worse on cognitive tests measuring verbal memory and processing speed, according to the findings. MRI scans also revealed troubling physical markers of aging in the brain, including shrinkage and enlarged ventricles, among those who had experienced sustained low income. Dr. Jacques Wels, the study’s lead author from UCL’s Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing, said that while researchers have long understood the roles genetics and childhood adversity play in cognitive decline, far less was known about how the accumulation of poverty over a lifetime shapes the aging brain.
The effects were most pronounced among men, those who grew up in disadvantaged circumstances, and carriers of a genetic variant associated with higher Alzheimer’s risk. Wels noted that the stronger impact observed among men likely reflects the cultural expectations placed on male breadwinners in older generations, a dynamic that might not appear as strongly in younger cohorts. He emphasized that while individual behaviors and genetics matter, the study makes clear that experiences largely outside a person’s control also shape how the brain ages.
The researchers suggested that chronic stress from prolonged financial worry could drive inflammation or place such a heavy mental burden on individuals that it effectively wears down cognitive resources over time. They were careful to note that the observational design of the study cannot definitively prove causation, and other unmeasured factors may have played a role. Still, Wels said the consistency across multiple measures of both financial adversity and cognitive decline makes the results compelling, and he suggested that reducing long-term poverty could be an important strategy for protecting public brain health as populations grow older.