IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp17147.html

Place of Birth and Cognitive Function among Older Americans: Findings from the Harmonized Cognitive Assessment Protocol

Author

Listed:
  • Lin, Zhuoer

    (Emory University)

  • Chen, Xi

    (Yale University)

Abstract

Growing evidence suggests that place of birth (PoB) and related circumstances may have long- lasting and multiplicative contributions to various later-life outcomes. This study investigates the extent to which PoB contributes to a wide range of domains of later-life cognitive function. Leveraging a nationally representative sample of older Americans from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), cognitive function is assessed in Harmonized Cognitive Assessment Protocol (HCAP). Regression-based Shapley decompositions are employed to quantify the contribution of PoB. We show that PoB significantly contributes to all assessed cognitive domains including memory, executive function, language and fluency, visuospatial function, orientation, and general cognitive function. Geographic disparities in cognitive function are evident across PoB, with individuals born in US southern states and foreign-born individuals performing worse than those born in other states. Overall, state of birth accounts for 2.2-9.7% of the total variance in cognition after controlling for age, sex, and race/ethnicity, which declines to 2.0-7.0% after further controlling for comprehensive socioeconomic and health factors over the life course, and are robust to the control of current state of residence. Addressing these disparities requires more equalized place-based policies, resources, and early-life environments to promote health equity over the life course.

Suggested Citation

  • Lin, Zhuoer & Chen, Xi, 2024. "Place of Birth and Cognitive Function among Older Americans: Findings from the Harmonized Cognitive Assessment Protocol," IZA Discussion Papers 17147, IZA Network @ LISER.
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17147
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp17147.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Raj Chetty & Nathaniel Hendren, 2018. "The Impacts of Neighborhoods on Intergenerational Mobility II: County-Level Estimates," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 133(3), pages 1163-1228.
    2. Komro, K.A. & Livingston, M.D. & Markowitz, S. & Wagenaar, A.C., 2016. "The effect of an increased minimum wage on infant mortality and birth weight," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 106(8), pages 1514-1516.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Benjamin Sosnaud, 2024. "Decomposition analysis of disparities in infant mortality rates across 27 US states," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 50(40), pages 1185-1222.
    2. Uwe Sunde & Thomas Dohmen & Benjamin Enke & Armin Falkbriq & David Huffman & Gerrit Meyerheim, 2022. "Patience and Comparative Development," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 89(5), pages 2806-2840.
    3. Alex Bell & Raj Chetty & Xavier Jaravel & Neviana Petkova & John Van Reenen, 2019. "Who Becomes an Inventor in America? The Importance of Exposure to Innovation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 134(2), pages 647-713.
    4. Vincent A. Fusaro & H. Luke Shaefer & Jasmine Simington, 2021. "Communities Moving Ahead, Falling Behind: Evidence from the Index of Deep Disadvantage," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 695(1), pages 292-312, May.
    5. Chong Lu, 2022. "The effect of migration on rural residents’ intergenerational subjective social status mobility in China," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 56(5), pages 3279-3308, October.
    6. John Gathergood & Fabian Gunzinger & Benedict Guttman-Kenney & Edika Quispe-Torreblanca & Neil Stewart, 2020. "Levelling Down and the COVID-19 Lockdowns: Uneven Regional Recovery in UK Consumer Spending," Papers 2012.09336, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2020.
    7. Kalra, Aarushi, 2021. "A 'Ghetto' of One's Own: Communal Violence, Residential Segregation and Group Education Outcomes in India," SocArXiv rzjct, Center for Open Science.
    8. Will Davis & Alexander Gordan & Rusty Tchernis, 2021. "Measuring the spatial distribution of health rankings in the United States," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(11), pages 2921-2936, November.
    9. Tatyana Deryugina & David Molitor, 2021. "The Causal Effects of Place on Health and Longevity," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 35(4), pages 147-170, Fall.
    10. Alberto Alesina & Marlon Seror & David Y. Yang & Yang You & Weihong Zeng, 2020. "Persistence through Revolutions," Working Papers DT/2020/09, DIAL (Développement, Institutions et Mondialisation).
    11. repec:osf:socarx:rpq5z_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Rodriguez-Segura, Daniel & Campton, Cole & Crouch, Luis & Slade, Timothy S., 2021. "Looking beyond changes in averages in evaluating foundational learning: Some inequality measures," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    13. Luís Clemente-Casinhas & Luís Filipe Martins & Alexandra Ferreira-Lopes, 2025. "Using Survey Data to Estimate Intergenerational Mobility in Income and Education in Portugal," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 176(1), pages 51-106, January.
    14. Javier Cortés Orihuela & Juan D. Díaz & Pablo Gutiérrez Cubillos & Pablo A. Troncoso & Gabriel I. Villarroel, 2024. "Intergenerational earnings mobility in Chile: the tale of the upper tail," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 67(5), pages 2411-2447, November.
    15. Monique de Haan & Magnus Stubhaug, 2024. "The causal component in the intergenerational transmission of income," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 24-063/V, Tinbergen Institute.
    16. Craig Wesley Carpenter & Michael C Lotspeich-Yadao & Charles M Tolbert, 2022. "When to use commuting zones? An empirical description of spatial autocorrelation in U.S. counties versus commuting zones," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(7), pages 1-14, July.
    17. Fred Wulczyn & Xiaomeng Zhou & Jamie McClanahan & Scott Huhr & Kristen Hislop & Forrest Moore & Emily Rhodes, 2023. "Race, Poverty, and Foster Care Placement in the United States: Longitudinal and Cross-Sectional Perspectives," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(16), pages 1-19, August.
    18. González-Jiménez, Víctor, 2022. "Social status and motivated beliefs," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 211(C).
    19. Erin Cottle Hunt & Frank N. Caliendo, 2022. "Social security and risk sharing: A survey of four decades of economic analysis," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(5), pages 1591-1609, December.
    20. Perelman, Sergio & Pestieau, Pierre & Racionero, Maria, 2023. "Social mobility, education and populism," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2023026, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    21. Suzane Bellue, 2023. "Why Don’t Poor Families Move? A Spatial Equilibirum Analysis of Parental Decisions with Social Learning," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2023_472, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • I14 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Inequality
    • I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General
    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
    • J14 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of the Elderly; Economics of the Handicapped; Non-Labor Market Discrimination
    • H75 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Government: Health, Education, and Welfare

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17147. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Mark Fallak (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaalu.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.