Being Working Class Ages British Women

If the British class system weren’t unfair enough already (though, it’s got better in the last 200 years), a new study published in Aging Cell, suggests that merely being working class will age a British woman. It doesn’t matter whether she is a member of the proletariat by birth or whether she has it thrust upon her by virtue of marriage. Merely being C2 is enough to put seven years on a woman compared with A or B status.

Professor Tim Spector, of St. Thomas’ Hospital, London, said that the usual culprits like bad diet, smoking, lack of exercise, poor education and low incomes didn’t adequately explain the differences seen in his study. He attributed the differences to the great 21st century plague, stress. People from lower social backgrounds are more likely to feel insecure, especially at work, and suffer low self-esteem and a sense of lacking control over their lives, he told The Times.

Needless to say, this kind of research makes one very suspicious of the methodology involved; however, it seems that the study was as rigorous as they come. It's subjects were 1,500 British women between 18 and 75, all twins (some fraternal, others identical). “All the women were assigned to one of five officially recognised socioeconomic groups. The scientists then examined their chromosomes, the coiled bundles of DNA in every cell that contain the genes,” according to The Times. The report added,

Chromosomes have protective caps, called telomeres, which act like the ends of shoelaces to prevent them fraying and suffering damage. Telomeres can be likened to time-delay fuses. Whenever a cell divides, they shorten, until a point is reached at which the chromosome can no longer be kept stable. The cell then stops dividing, its structure and function begin to fail, and it may die. Experts believe telomere shortening is a marker for biological ageing.