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Higher educational attainment and later-life cognition: Twentieth-century linkages by gender and race in the United States

Author

Listed:
  • Andersson, Matthew A.
  • Coleman, Max E.
  • Harnois, Catherine E.
  • Schafer, Markus H.

Abstract

Educational attainment is one of the strongest social protectants against later-life cognitive decline. However, higher education is unequally distributed across the global population. In the United States, structural barriers to higher education shifted dramatically across birth cohorts during the twentieth century, carrying very different impacts for individuals depending on their gender as well as their race. To begin to understand how these institutional changes shaped intersectional disparities in cognitive health, we conduct a multi-cohort, inverse-probability-weighted analysis using the Health and Retirement Study, focused on the gendering of Black-White cognitive disparities. In older cohorts, we find that the protective association between higher education and dementia is stronger for Black respondents compared to White respondents, but weaker for women compared to men. Therefore, Black men show the strongest cognitive gains linked to higher education. In contrast, younger cohorts show indications of weaker gender and racial differences in educational gains, which is consistent with receding structural sexism and racism. Our findings generally hold across supplemental analyses that consider panel conditioning of cognitive scores as well as stratification by specific birth cohorts. In conclusion, we contrast the historical embeddedness of a cohort-grounded, intersectional approach to neurodevelopmental approaches that often foreground homogenous or dose-response relationships between increments in educational attainment and improved cognitive health. For future research, we propose closer attention to variation in family, pre-college, and work characteristics that inform differential selection and causation processes relevant to higher education.

Suggested Citation

  • Andersson, Matthew A. & Coleman, Max E. & Harnois, Catherine E. & Schafer, Markus H., 2026. "Higher educational attainment and later-life cognition: Twentieth-century linkages by gender and race in the United States," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 391(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:391:y:2026:i:c:s0277953625012146
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2025.118883
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    References listed on IDEAS

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