How educational attainment may impact memory and dementia risk later in life

The study, published in Epidemiology, compared the differences in years of education based on variations in state schooling mandates with cognitive performance outcomes in residents decades later.

"Policies to increase the quantity or quality of schooling now are likely to have long-term benefits on cognitive outcomes," said Min Hee Kim, a faculty member in the Center for Health Services Research at the Rutgers Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research and the lead author of the study.

Researchers have found education can be a predictor of better cognitive performance, memory function, life expectancy and delayed onset of Alzheimer's disease or dementia. Despite the previous evidence that schooling requirement laws impact cognition in older adults, gaps in equitable research remain. For example, previous research has lumped together educational gain of white older adults and Black older adults, although school mandates weren't consistently enforced for Black children in the United States.

When she was a postdoctoral researcher at University of California San Francisco from 2022 to 2024, Kim led researchers in examining data from more than 20,000 older Black and white adults and evaluating state education policies. They found increased years of education as a result of a state's mandatory schooling laws and laws related to education quality were associated with better overall cognitive performance later in life including better memory and verbal fluency -- major determinants of dementia risk.

Researchers examined the specific impact of education on Black Americans with regard to former educational policies and opportunities. Among other inequalities, current generations of Black older adults received education from a system impacted by racial segregation and racial discrimination.

"Investment in education is important for health equity," said Kim, an assistant professor in the Rutgers School of Nursing. "Education provides similar benefits for later-life cognitive outcomes across racial groups, but the potential impact of improvements to education access and quality is likely to be larger for Black Americans because a greater proportion of this population is exposed to limited educational resources."

Kim added this investigation further supported previous research which found that residing in states with high-quality education as a child is associated with lower dementia risk later in life.

Coauthors include researchers from Montclair State University, Kaiser Permanente Northwest, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, University of Maryland School of Public Health, Columbia University, University of Alabama at Birmingham and Boston University.