How much money do you have? Before you argue that your bank account is your business, hear this out. We are not asking you the question; your brain is! Your brain has been keeping tabs on your financial struggles for longer than you would expect, and it is not happy about them. British scientists have now found that chronic money worries are not just draining your bank account; they are actually shrinking your brain.A new study led by University College London (UCL) researchers found that persistent financial problems can cause long-term damage to your brain. The findings of the study are published in the journal Innovation in Aging.
Your money is not just your business
UCL scientists spent decades following thousands of Britons, tracking their financial worry levels from young adulthood through to their 70s. What they found is striking: your wallet and your brain are connected in ways you probably did not expect. They found that persistent financial problems accelerated age-related cognitive decline.People who spent years struggling to pay bills did not just feel stressed. By the time they reached their 70s, their brains had physically aged faster than their peers. The scientists found more shrinkage, more deterioration, and more markers of cognitive decline in their brain scans. It is as if chronic money stress had put their brains on a fast track towards ageing.
How money struggles affect the brain
The researchers examined data on 2,759 British adults from birth through their 70s. These individuals filled in questionnaires as part of the MRC National Survey of Health and Development (also known as the 1946 British cohort study). The researchers found that people who faced persistent financial hardship during their 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s performed less well in cognitive tests by the age of 53. They also looked at brain scans and found that people who had long-standing money struggles had worse brain health, such as more brain shrinkage in later life (ages 69 to 71). These links remained even after the researchers adjusted for other factors such as childhood cognition, education level, and childhood disadvantage.“Most studies on cognitive ageing look at financial hardship at only a single point in time. Our study, using several decades of data, allows us to see that it is the accumulation of hardship over many years that is linked to the worst cognitive health outcomes, rather than occasional episodes of adversity,” corresponding author Dr Jacques Wels (Unit for Lifelong Health & Ageing at UCL) said in a statement.“Our findings suggest that supporting people facing financial hardship and reducing chronic poverty could also help prevent cognitive decline and dementia cases in the future,” senior author Professor Praveetha Patalay (Unit for Lifelong Health & Ageing and Centre for Longitudinal Studies, UCL) added.
Financial struggle affected men more
The study also found that men were more vulnerable. The link between financial adversity and poorer brain health later in life was predominantly seen in men. Those from disadvantaged backgrounds faced compounded effects, and people carrying the APOE-ε4 genetic variant, which increases Alzheimer’s risk, appeared especially susceptible to the cognitive toll of financial stress.The researchers found that men who experienced long-term financial struggles performed worse in cognitive tests at 53 compared with their female counterparts. This could be because disadvantaged men have poorer health behaviours, such as smoking and alcohol misuse, than women. As a result, men might experience the stress of financial adversity more acutely, especially as many would have been the primary breadwinner in this cohort born in 1946.
Why financial stress affects the brain
How does financial stress affect your brain? There could be different mechanisms linking cognitive ageing and financial hardship, including inflammation driven by chronic stress, which accelerates brain ageing. According to the researchers, another contributing factor is the constant worry about money, which increases cognitive load, leaving less capacity for other thinking tasks. There is one oddity in the data worth noting: people who experienced persistent financial strain actually showed slower memory decline between ages 53 and 69 compared with those without such strain. Why? They had already suffered significant cognitive losses by 53; there was not as much ground left to lose.The researchers assessed financial hardship using questions such as whether people found it hard to manage on their income and whether they had trouble paying bills. If they reached a set threshold at least twice between ages 36 and 53, they were classified as having experienced persistent hardship. This group represented about 12% (around one in eight) of the participants.
