Population Group Differences in Cognitive Functioning in a National Sample of Israelis Fifty Years and Older

The study evaluates population group differences of Israelis 50 years and older in cognitive functioning. Groups were defined based on year of arrival and preferred language (e.g., veteran Jewish Israelis- n= 1,974; new immigrants from the former Soviet Union- n=187; and Arab Israelis- n=331). Using a cross-sectional analysis of the first wave of SHARE-Israel, we evaluate a representative sample of Israelis over the age of 50 stratified by population group. Cognitive screens assessed include time orientation, arithmetic, verbal learning, verbal recall, word fluency and subjective reading and writing abilities. To evaluate population group differences, we conducted multivariate analyses of each of the cognitive domains, controlling for age, gender, education, household income, and ever smoking. Relative to veteran Jewish Israelis, new immigrants from the former Soviet Unions were more likely to rate their reading ability as impaired (OR=2.47, 95% CI: 1.32-4.60). In addition, there was a significant interaction between population group and education on the arithmetic task (OR=.69, 95% CI: .58-.83). New immigrants from the former Soviet Union were less impaired than the other two groups especially at lower levels of education. New immigrants were more impaired on the verbal learning task (OR=2.65, 95% CI: 1.38-5.07). On the other hand, relative to veteran Israeli-Jews, Israeli-Arabs were significantly less likely to have impaired performance on the verbal recall task (OR=.31, 95% CI=.16-.60). The results demonstrate that overall, new immigrant from the Former Soviet Union exhibit greater difficulties on the verbal tasks, but not on the arithmetic task. The findings from the current study are somewhat in contrast with the international literature which tends to show that the majority culture outperforms relative to ethnic minorities.