A study of middle-aged Americans reveals that there is a clear link between wealth and health not that this would be something new.

Previous studies have backed the strong relationship between wealth and health. However, this is the first study to look at how factors affecting socioeconomic status like education, income, and overall wealth, evolve throughout middle and old age.

“We confirmed that lower wealth, education and income are associated with increased stroke up to age 65, and wealth is the strongest predictor of stroke among the factors we looked at. After age 65, the association of education, income and wealth with stroke are very weak, and wealth did not clearly predict stroke,” said Mauricio Avendano, Ph.D., of Erasmus University Medical Center, author of the study, according to Webmd.com

For the study, Dr. Avendano and co-author M. Maria Glymour, Ph.D., of Harvard analyzed data from the University of Michigan Health and Retirement Study, which followed a group of 19,445 Americans aged 50 or older for an average of 8.5 years. During the follow-up period, 1,542 people in the study suffered a stroke.

The researchers divided the participants’ wealth levels into six categories and found that the 10 percent at the bottom of the wealth ladder had three times more stroke risk between the ages of 50 and 65 than those at the top, excluding the “ultra-rich.” However, at age 65 and older, stroke risk was not significantly different between the two wealth groups for men or women.

“We expected wealth to be a strong predictor of stroke in the elderly. We were surprised to see that it was not associated with stroke beyond age 65,” Dr. Avendano said.

He further noted that many Americans are not in strong financial shape by the time they reach age 50, which can have a negative influence on their health.

“Lack of material resources themselves, and particularly wealth, appears to strongly influence people’s chances to have a first stroke. From a public health perspective, this would mean that diminishing the large wealth gap at age 50-64 also could help diminish the large disparities in stroke. However, diminishing wealth inequality requires transforming structural policies beyond the healthcare system that aim to redistribute income and wealth to benefit the most disadvantaged members of society,” he said.

The study also found: 1.) Lower wealth, income and education in those age 50-74 were associated with a higher prevalence of high blood pressure, smoking, low physical activity, excessive weight, diabetes and heart disease (all risk factors for stroke); 2.) Education was not associated with lower stroke risk after age 65; 3.) Although higher education predicted a lower stroke risk among 50-64-year-olds, the risk was not significant after the researchers adjusted for income and wealth.

Dr. Avendano said, “Further study is needed to understand why the effect of wealth, income and education on stroke is less clear beyond age 65 and the role of selective survival.”

According to the American Heart Association, about 780,000 people in the U.S. suffer a stroke annually and about 27 percent of these strokes occur before age 65.

The study, funded by the National Institute on Aging, was published in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association.