A comprehensive study spanning four continents has identified a correlation between social inequities, diminished democratic governance, and environmental conditions like high air pollution with accelerated aging. Education emerged as a significant protective factor against rapid aging.

Additionally, the research highlighted that aging could be expedited by more predictable elements such as high blood pressure and cardiovascular diseases. However, the influence of socio-political factors offers insights into the varying aging rates observed across different nations, according to the study’s authors.

“This is a crucial study,” comments Claudia Kimie Suemoto, a geriatrician from the University of São Paulo, who was not involved in the research. “It provides a global view on how these dependent factors influence aging in various regions around the world.”

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“We live in a world filled with despair due to political polarization and uncertainty, which ages us,” states Agustín Ibañez, the study’s lead author and director of the Latin American Brain Health Institute in Santiago. He stresses the long-term health impacts of these conditions.

The findings were published today in Nature Medicine.

Exploring Age Disparities

Involving 161,981 participants from 40 countries across continents, including Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, the study took nearly three years just to standardize the data, according to Ibañez.

The team reviewed prior studies to pinpoint factors that might influence aging rates and could be compared internationally. They utilized a machine-learning model that estimates chronological age to identify each participant’s ‘biobehavioural age gap’—the difference between their actual age and the age predicted by the model.

For instance, if you are 50 but the model considers you 60, your biobehavioural age gap is 10 years.

The Protective Role of Education

Major medical risk factors accelerating aging identified in the study include high blood pressure, hearing loss, and heart disease. Other aging accelerators were poor nutrition, excessive alcohol use, sleep disturbances, diabetes, and vision impairments.

Conversely, the best defenses against rapid aging were found to be educational attainment, daily living skills, and cognitive functions. Physical fitness, good memory, and mobility also played protective roles.

Countries like Egypt and South Africa showed the fastest aging rates, while European nations aged the slowest. Asian and Latin American countries fell in between these extremes.

Remarkably, accelerated aging correlated strongly with signs of deteriorating democracy, such as compromised election fairness and restricted political freedoms. Lower national incomes, exposure to pollutants, and social and gender inequalities were also linked to quicker aging.

With data spanning up to four years for 21,631 participants, researchers could analyze changes over time, finding that a larger biobehavioural age gap predicted more significant cognitive and daily function declines.

The Impact of Stress

The exact relationship between physical aging and socio-economic or political environments remains unclear, but Ibañez suggests stress and its physiological effects on the body and brain, such as inflammation, might be key mechanisms.

A challenge in the study was the necessity to exclude certain variables like smoking, which significantly affect aging but are measured inconsistently across countries, according to Ibañez.

Suemoto sees the four-year follow-up data as too brief to fully capture the aging process and hopes for longer-term data in future studies.

Both Suemoto and Ibañez are optimistic about the potential for public policies to be designed around the primary factors contributing to aging in specific countries.

Interestingly, the model found some individuals to be biologically younger than their chronological age. Identifying common factors among these individuals could lead to interventions that prevent premature aging in others, suggests Ibañez.

This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on July 14, 2025.