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Objectives: Incarceration is a risk factor for health morbidities and early mortality. Despite its far-reaching health impacts, incarceration has never been examined as a contributor to the process that geroscience has identified as the root of most, if not all, chronic health conditions: aging.
Methods: Using recently developed methods for quantifying biological age, the current study tests the hypothesis that individuals with a history of incarceration experience accelerated rates of aging. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, a nationally representative longitudinal study of elderly Americans, we compare rates of biological aging between those with and without a history of incarceration.
Results: Individuals with a history of incarceration were aging faster than those with no history of incarceration. The association was particularly strong for white males, with less pronounced differences for other racial/ethnic and gender groups.
Conclusions: Results suggest that incarceration produces an approximately two-year acceleration in biological age, on average. Substantive variation across racial groups was observed, suggesting incarceration may contribute to broader health disparities.