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Distinct effects of early-stage and late-stage socioeconomic factors on brain and behavioral traits

Nature Neuroscience volume 28, pages 676–687 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Socioeconomic status (SES) is a time-varying multidimensional construct with ill-defined dimension-specific and age-specific effects on brain and behavior. We investigated these effects in 4,228 young adults. From 16 socioeconomic indicators, assessed for early (0–10 years) and late (>10 years) stages, we constructed family, provincial, family adverse and neighborhood adverse socioeconomic dimensions. Generally, family SES was associated with brain structure and connectivity along with cognitive function, whereas family adverse and neighborhood adverse SES were associated with personality and emotion. Most associations were observed for both early and late-stage SES; however, adjusting for the effect of early stage SES revealed late-stage-specific SES effects. Changes in SES were associated with personality and cognitive function. Cerebellar and medial frontal volumes and functional connectivity within the left frontoparietal network mediated the associations between family SES and memory and openness. These results inform both more precise interventions for reducing the consequences of adverse SES and experimental designs for excluding confounding socioeconomic effects on human health.

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Fig. 1: Schematic diagram of the study design.
Fig. 2: Average, early and late four-factor SES models with 16 indicators.
Fig. 3: Dimension-specific and period-specific SES associations with brain-imaging measures.
Fig. 4: Dimension-specific associations of average, early and late SES with behavioral traits.
Fig. 5: Period-specific and mobile-specific SES associations with behavioral traits.
Fig. 6: Mediations of brain-imaging measures for associations between SES and behavioral traits.

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Data availability

The data supporting the findings of this study are divided into two groups: published data and restricted data. The voxel-wise neuroimaging statistical maps are available through figshare (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.27282723)75. The individual-level data that support the findings of this study are not openly available because access to these data must be approved by the Human Genetic Resource Administration, Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China. Individual-level data from samples are stored and kept in a server physically located in mainland China, which are available from the corresponding authors upon request and with permission from the Human Genetic Resource Administration, Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China.

Change history

  • 16 April 2025

    In the version of the article initially published, the second affiliation of Shijun Qiu was incorrect and has now been amended to affiliation 40 (the State Key Laboratory of Traditional Chinese Medicine Syndrome, Guangzhou, China) in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 82430063 and 82030053 to C.Y., 82330058 and T2341014 to S.Q., 82001796 to Q.X., 82371924 to J.Xu), Tianjin Applied Basic Research Multi-fund Project (grant no. 21JCQNJC01010 to Q.X.), New Star of Excellence Project of Tianjin Medical University General Hospital (grant no. 209060403205 to Q.X.), Tianjin Key Medical Discipline (Specialty) Construction Project (grant no. TJYXZDXK-001A to C.Y.) and National Key Project of 'Inter-governmental International Scientific and Technological Innovation Cooperation' to J. Xu (grant no. 2023YFE0199700), the Tianjin Young Talents in Science and Technology for J. Xu (grant no. QN20230336), the Non-profit Central Research Institute Fund of Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences to J. Xu (grant no. 2024-JKCS-18), the Tianjin Science and Technology Commission Major Special Project in Public Health Science and Technology to J. Xu (grant no. 24ZXGQSY00050) and the Tianjin Medical University 'Clinical Talent Training 123 Climbing Plan' to J. Xu.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Qiang Xu, Su Lui, Yuan Ji.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Radiology, Tianjin Key Laboratory of Functional Imaging, and State Key Laboratory of Experimental Hematology, Tianjin Medical University General Hospital, Tianjin, China

    Qiang Xu, Yuan Ji, Wen Qin, Feng Liu, Jilian Fu, Jiayuan Xu, Chunshui Yu, Chunshui Yu, Quan Zhang, Junping Wang, Xue Zhang, Xinjun Suo, Congcong Yuan, Hui Xue, Tianying Gao, Junpeng Liu, Yanjun Li, Xi Guo, Lixue Xu, Jiajia Zhu, Huaigui Liu, Fangshi Zhao, Jie Sun, Yongjie Xu, Huanhuan Cai, Jie Tang, Yaodan Zhang, Yongqin Xiong, Xianting Sun, Nannan Pan, Jiayang Yang, Nana Liu, Ya Wen, Dan Zhu, Bingjie Wu, Wenshuang Zhu, Qingqing Diao, Yujuan Cao, Bingbing Yang, Lining Guo, Yingying Xie, Jiahui Lin, Zhimin Li, Yan Zhang, Kaizhong Xue, Zirui Wang & Junlin Shen

  2. Department of Radiology, the Center for Medical Imaging, West China Hospital of Sichuan University, Chengdu, China

    Su Lui

  3. Department of Magnetic Resonance Imaging, The First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, China

    Jingliang Cheng, Caihong Wang, Peifang Miao, Fuhong Duan, Yafei Guo & Weijian Wang

  4. Department of Medical Imaging, Jinling Hospital, Medical School of Nanjing University, Nanjing, China

    Long Jiang Zhang, Lijuan Zheng, Li Lin, Yunfei Wang, Han Zhang & Xinyuan Zhang

  5. Department of Radiology, Drum Tower Hospital, Medical School of Nanjing University, Nanjing, China

    Bing Zhang, Zhao Qing, Sichu Wu, Junxia Wang, Yi Sun & Yang He

  6. Department of Radiology, Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China

    Wenzhen Zhu & Tian Tian

  7. Department of Medical Imaging, The Second Hospital of Hebei Medical University, Shijiazhuang, China

    Zuojun Geng, Yuzhao Wang, Yankai Wu, Xuran Feng, Ling Li & Duo Gao

  8. Functional and Molecular Imaging Key Lab of Shaanxi Province & Department of Radiology, Tangdu Hospital, Air Force Medical University, Xi’an, China

    Guangbin Cui, Wen Wang, Linfeng Yan, Yang Yang & Jin Zhang

  9. Department of Radiology, Characteristic Medical Center of Chinese People’s Armed Police Force, Tianjin, China

    Quan Zhang & Fei Yuan

  10. Department of Radiology, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, China

    Weihua Liao, Weihua Liao, Shuai Yang & Youming Zhang

  11. Molecular Imaging Research Center of Central South University, Changsha, China

    Weihua Liao, Weihua Liao, Shuai Yang & Youming Zhang

  12. National Clinical Research Center for Geriatric Disorders, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, China

    Weihua Liao, Weihua Liao, Shuai Yang & Youming Zhang

  13. Department of Radiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Hefei, China

    Yongqiang Yu, Xiaohu Li & Xiaoshu Li

  14. Department of Radiology, The First Hospital of Shanxi Medical University, Taiyuan, China

    Hui Zhang, Xiaochun Wang & Ying Lei

  15. Department of Radiology, The Affiliated Hospital of Guizhou Medical University, Guiyang, China

    Bo Gao & Bo Gao

  16. Department of Radiology, Yantai Yuhuangding Hospital, Yantai, China

    Bo Gao, Bo Gao, Gang Zhang & Kang Yuan

  17. Department of Radiology, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University, School of Medicine, Hangzhou, China

    Xiaojun Xu, Jingjing Xu & Xiaojun Guan

  18. Department of Radiology, Tianjin Huanhu Hospital, Tianjin, China

    Tong Han, Jun Guo & Hao Lu

  19. Department of Radiology, Huashan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

    Zhenwei Yao & Yue Wu

  20. School of Medical Imaging and Tianjin Key Laboratory of Functional Imaging, Tianjin Medical University, Tianjin, China

    Meng Liang, Meng Liang, Xuejun Zhang, Hao Ding & Qian Su

  21. Department of Radiology, Tianjin Medical University Cancer Institute and Hospital, Tianjin, China

    Peng Zhang, Wei Li & Zhaoxiang Ye

  22. Department of Radiology, Henan Provincial People’s Hospital & Zhengzhou University People’s Hospital, Zhengzhou, China

    Dapeng Shi, Meiyun Wang, Lun Ma, Yan Bai, Min Guan & Wei Wei

  23. Center for MRI Research, Academy for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Jia-Hong Gao, Jianqiao Ge & Guoyuan Yang

  24. Department of Radiology, The Second Affiliated Hospital and Yuying Children’s Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, China

    Zhihan Yan, Yuchuan Fu & Yi Lu

  25. Department of Radiology, Hainan General Hospital (Hainan Affiliated Hospital of Hainan Medical University), Haikou, China

    Feng Chen, Yuankai Lin & Hui Juan Chen

  26. Department of Radiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, China

    Jiance Li, Yunjun Yang & Nengzhi Xia

  27. Department of Magnetic Resonance, Lanzhou University Second Hospital, Lanzhou, China

    Jing Zhang, Jing Zhang, Guangyao Liu & Laiyang Ma

  28. Gansu Province Clinical Research Center for Functional and Molecular Imaging, Lanzhou, China

    Jing Zhang, Jing Zhang, Guangyao Liu & Laiyang Ma

  29. Department of Radiology, Qilu Hospital of Shandong University, Jinan, China

    Dawei Wang, Li Hu & Jizhen Li

  30. Department of Radiology, Tianjin First Center Hospital, Tianjin, China

    Wen Shen, Miaomiao Long & Lihua Liu

  31. Department of Radiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian, China

    Yanwei Miao, Weiwei Wang & Yujing Zhou

  32. Department of Radiology, Beijing Tongren Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China

    Junfang Xian, Qian Wang, Xiaoxia Qu & Ying Wang

  33. Division of Life Science and Medicine, University of Science & Technology of China, Hefei, China

    Xiaochu Zhang, Rujing Zha, Ying Li, Lizhuang Yang, Ying Chen & Ling Zuo

  34. IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

    Xi-Nian Zuo, Xi-Nian Zuo, Zhe Zhang, Yin-Shan Wang & Quan Zhou

  35. Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Xi-Nian Zuo, Xi-Nian Zuo, Zhe Zhang, Yin-Shan Wang & Quan Zhou

  36. Department of Radiology, The Affiliated Hospital of Xuzhou Medical University, Xuzhou, China

    Kai Xu, Haitao Ge, Peng Xu, Cailuan Lu, Chen Wu & Xiaoying Yang

  37. Department of Radiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou, China

    Shijun Qiu, Yi Liang, Yujie Liu, Hui Zeng & Jingxian Chen

  38. State Key Laboratory of Traditional Chinese Medicine Syndrome, Guangzhou, China

    Shijun Qiu, Yi Liang, Yujie Liu, Hui Zeng & Jingxian Chen

  39. CAS Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China

    Chunshui Yu & Chunshui Yu

  40. Department of Bioinformatics, The Province and Ministry Co-sponsored Collaborative Innovation Center for Medical Epigenetics, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Tianjin Medical University, Tianjin, China

    Mulin Jun Li & Shijie Zhang

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  1. Qiang Xu
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  2. Su Lui
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  3. Yuan Ji
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  4. Jingliang Cheng
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Contributions

C. Y. and Q.X. designed the study. Q.X., S.L., Y.J. and C. Y. wrote the paper, and all authors critically reviewed the paper. Q.X., S.L., Y.J., W.Q., F.L., M. L., J.F., J.Xu, K.X., S.Q. and C. Y. were the principal investigators. J.C., L.J.Z., B.Z., W.Z., Z.G., G.C., Q.Z., W. Liao, Y.Y., H.Z., B.G., X.X., T.H., Z. Yao, P.Z., W. Li, D.S., C. W., J.-H.G., Z.Y., F.C., J. L., J. Z., D.W., W.S., Y.M., J. Xian, M.W., Z. Ye, X. Zhang, X.-N.Z., K.X., S.Q. and C.Y. acquired the data. K.X., S.Q. and C.Y. supervised this work. Q.X., S.L. and Y.J. analyzed the data.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Kai Xu, Shijun Qiu or Chunshui Yu.

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The authors declare no competing interests

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Nature Neuroscience thanks Flávio Cunha, Hesheng Liu, and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Early and late four-factor SES models with 14 indicators.

a-b, Heat maps show Spearman correlations among the 14 early (b) and late (c) SES indicators in the total sample (n = 4,228). c-d, Plots show factor loadings of early (c) and late (d) SES indicators for the four SES dimensions and correlations between SES dimensional scores in the total sample. Abbreviations: GDP, gross domestic product; SES, socioeconomic status.

Extended Data Fig. 2 Dimension-specific associations between family SES and GMV.

The brain regions whose GMV values are significantly correlated with the average, early, or late family SES scores in the total sample (Pc < 0.013, FWE corrected). Labeled brain regions indicate stable associations. Color bars indicate T-value for the association statistics. The warm colors indicate positive correlations and the cold colors indicate negative correlations. The statistical maps of significant brain clusters are generated with software MRIcroGL (https://github.com/rordenlab/MRIcroGL). Abbreviations: GMV, gray matter volume; IFG, inferior frontal gyrus; ITG, inferior temporal gyrus; MPFC, medial prefrontal cortex; MTG, medial temporal gyrus; SES, socioeconomic status.

Extended Data Fig. 3 Dimension-specific associations between family SES and FA.

The brain regions whose FA values are significantly correlated with the average, early, or late family SES scores in the total sample (Pc < 0.013, TFCE-FWE corrected). Labeled brain regions indicate stable associations. Color bars indicate TFCE-corrected 1−Pc value for the association statistics. The warm colors indicate positive correlations and the cold colors indicate negative correlations. Green color represents the average white matter skeleton. The statistical maps of significant brain tract are generated with software MRIcroGL (https://github.com/rordenlab/MRIcroGL). Abbreviations: CSTs, corticospinal tracts; FA, fractional anisotropy; ILF, inferior longitudinal fasciculus; MTWM, medial temporal white matter; SES, socioeconomic status; TFCE, threshold-free cluster enhancement.

Extended Data Fig. 4 Group-level spatial maps of meaningful resting-state networks (RSNs).

From the 25 independent components, we identify 14 meaningful RSNs, including the salience (SN), auditory (AN), subcortical (SBN), cerebellar (CN), anterior (aDMN) and posterior (pDMN) default-mode, left (lFPN) and right (rFPN) frontoparietal, dorsal (DAN) and ventral (VAN) attention, superior (sSMN) and inferior (iSMN) sensorimotor, and anterior (aVN) and posterior (pVN) visual networks. The spatial maps of these RSNs are extracted with a z-threshold > 5. The spatial maps of 14 meaningful RSNs are generated with software MRIcroGL (https://github.com/rordenlab/MRIcroGL).

Extended Data Fig. 5 Associations of early and late SES with behavioral traits.

Early and late SES dimensions are constructed based on 14 SES indicators. Volcano plots show behavioral traits significantly associated with early or late family (a), family adverse (b), or neighborhood adverse (c) SES scores in the total sample. The vertical line indicates coefficient = 0, the blue horizontal line indicates P = 0.05, and the red horizontal line indicates P = 3.9×10−4 (Two-sided t-test with Bonferroni correction for 32 behavioral traits across four SES dimensions). Based on the Bonferroni corrected threshold, red-filled circles represent behavioral traits with stable associations, blue-filled circles represent those with unstable associations, and gray-filled circles represent those without significant associations. Abbreviations: BDI, Beck depression inventory; BIS-C, cognitive impulsivity of Barratt impulsivity scale; BIS-M, motor impulsivity of Barratt impulsivity scale; BIS-NP, non-planning impulsivity of Barratt impulsivity scale; CVLT-IFR, the number of correct words in the five trials for the word list A in California verbal learning test second edition; IRI-EC, empathy concern of interpersonal reactivity index; IRI-PD, personal distress of interpersonal reactivity index; IRI-PT, perspective taking of interpersonal reactivity index; N-back-CR, the correct rate of the 3-back task in the N-back task; NEO-A, agreeableness of NEO Five-Factor Inventory; NEO-C, conscientiousness of NEO Five-Factor Inventory; NEO-E, extroversion of NEO Five-Factor Inventory; NEO-N, neuroticism of NEO Five-Factor Inventory; NEO-O, openness to experience of NEO Five-Factor Inventory; PANAS-N, negative affect of positive and negative affect schedule; PANAS-P, positive affect of positive and negative affect schedule; T-AI, trait anxiety of state-trait anxiety inventory; TPQ-HA, harm avoidance of tridimensional personality questionnaires; TPQ-NS, novelty-seeking of tridimensional personality questionnaires.

Supplementary information

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Supplementary Tables 1–42.

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Xu, Q., Lui, S., Ji, Y. et al. Distinct effects of early-stage and late-stage socioeconomic factors on brain and behavioral traits. Nat Neurosci 28, 676–687 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-025-01882-w

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