Research on biological embedding of the social environment has been expedited by increased availability of biomarkers. Recently, this arsenal of measures has been expanded to include epigenetic clocks that indicate in years the extent to which an individual is older or younger than their chronological age. These measures of biological aging, especially GrimAge, are robust predictors of both illness and time to death. Importantly for sociologists, several studies have linked social conditions to these indices of aging. The present study extends this research using longitudinal data from a sample of 223 black women participating in the Family and Community Health Study. We find that changes in income and living arrangements over an 11-year period predict changes in speed of biological aging. These results provide further support for the idea that epigenetic aging is a mechanism whereby social conditions become biologically embedded. The utility of epigenetic clocks for sociological studies of health are discussed.

随着生物标志物可用性的增加，社会环境的生物嵌入研究得到了加速。最近，这一措施库已扩大到包括表观遗传时钟，这些时钟以年表示一个人比他们的实际年龄更老或更年轻的程度。这些生物衰老指标，尤其是 GrimAge，是疾病和死亡时间的有力预测指标。对社会学家来说重要的是，有几项研究将社会状况与这些衰老指数联系起来。本研究使用来自参与家庭和社区健康研究的 223 名黑人女性样本的纵向数据扩展了这项研究。我们发现，11 年期间收入和生活安排的变化预示着生物衰老速度的变化。这些结果进一步支持了表观遗传衰老是一种社会条件在生物学上嵌入的机制的观点。讨论了表观遗传时钟在健康社会学研究中的效用。