Background. It has been hypothesised that socio-economically deprived people age more rapidly than their more advantaged counterparts and this is manifested in shorter telomeres. However, in the very few studies conducted, substantial uncertainty exists regarding this relationship. Methods. In the present investigation, 1542 men in the West of Scotland Primary Prevention Study responded to a series of enquiries about their socioeconomic position (educational attainment, employment status,

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... ased deprivation), had their physical stature measured (a proxy for of early life social circumstances), and provided a blood specimen from which Leucocyte DNA was extracted and telomere length ascertained. Results. There was no strong evidence that any marker of these four socioeconomic position was robustly related to telomere length. The only exception was employment status: men who reported being out of work had significantly shorter telomere than those who were employed (p-value: 0.001). Conclusion. In this cross-sectional study -the largest to date to examine the relationship -we found little evidence of an association between socioeconomic status and telomere length.