Aggregating Epigenetic Clocks to Study Human Capital Formation

Giorgia Menta, Pietro Biroli (), Divya Mehta, Conchita D'Ambrosio () and Deborah A. Cobb-Clark ()
Additional contact information
Pietro Biroli: University of Bologna
Divya Mehta: Queensland University of Technology
Conchita D'Ambrosio: University of Luxembourg
Deborah A. Cobb-Clark: University of Sydney

No 18114, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Epigenetics is the study of how people’s behavior and environments influence the way their genes are expressed, even though their DNA sequence is itself unchanged. By aggregating age-related epigenetic markers, epigenetic ‘clocks’ have become the leading tool for studying biological aging. We make an important contribution by developing a novel, integrated measure of epigenetic aging – the Multi EpiGenetic Age (MEGA) clock – which combines several existing epigenetic clocks to reduce measurement error and improve estimation efficiency. We use the MEGA clock in three empirical contexts to show that: i) accelerated epigenetic aging in adolescence is associated with worse educational, mental-health, and labor market outcomes in early adulthood; ii) exposure to child maltreatment before adolescence is associated with half a year higher epigenetic aging; and iii) that entering school one year later accelerates epigenetic aging by age seven, particularly among disadvantaged children. The MEGA clock is robust to alternative methods for constructing it, providing a flexible and interpretable approach for incorporating epigenetic data into a wide variety of settings.

Keywords: child abuse; DNA methylation; epigenetic clocks; human capital; ALSPAC data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 I14 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-lma and nep-ltv
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp18114.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18114

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().