Determinants and consequences of biological ageing: life stressors, socioeconomic shocks and mental health

Stressful life events and negative economic shocks may damage health, but the deterioration is 
hard to observe with traditional measures (e.g., diagnoses, prescriptions, functional limitations). 
The body absorbs the shock long before it surfaces as illness or care, and biological age offers a 
reliable pre-clinical alternative. Linking Lifelines to Dutch administrative registers, we study how life 
events (e.g., bereavement, severe illness of a relative, childbirth, separation), socioeconomic 
shocks (e.g., mass layoffs, job loss, employment insecurity) and (related) mental health issues 
causally affect physical health, measured via accelerated ageing, and, in the other direction, how 
accelerated ageing affects later outcomes.