Early adversity, poverty, and positive social development show distinct associations across epigenetic aging measures in childhood

Abstract Adversity and poverty are implicated in biological aging, but epigenetic age research has produced inconsistent findings, and few studies have considered positive developmental factors. Leveraging the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study ( N = 863 with epigenetic data; 51.14% males; 45.67% Non-Hispanic Black), we examined how early adversity, poverty, and social skills trajectories in childhood relate to multiple epigenetic clocks at age 9 ( M age = 9.33 ± 0.32), including age-trained (Horvath, Hannum, Skin & Blood, PedBE), health-related (PhenoAge, GrimAge), and pace of aging (DunedinPACE) measures. Early adversity was associated with accelerated GrimAge ( β = 0.12) and PedBE ( β = 0.12), but decelerated age on Horvath ( β = −0.08) and Skin & Blood clocks ( β = −0.12). Poverty showed more consistent associations with accelerated age on mortality-related clocks. Children with decreasing social skills across childhood had higher GrimAge ( β = 0.20), and this pattern of social development partially mediated the effect of poverty. This pattern was specific to social skills and not psychopathology symptoms. Together, these findings suggest that early adversity and poverty are implicated in similar and distinct alterations in epigenetic clocks indexing maturation versus disease risk, while social development may play a role specifically in epigenetic aging related to disease risk.