Early Educational Experiences and Trajectories of Cognitive Functioning Among US Adults in Midlife and Later

Educational attainment is often considered the most important protective factor against cognitive impairment and dementia, yet significant variation in early educational experiences exists among midlife and older US adults. We used prospective data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) along with information on respondents' early educational experiences collected in the 2015 and 2017 HRS Life History Mail Survey to examine whether school context, educational content, and academic ability were associated with trajectories of cognitive functioning and whether educational attainment explains this relationship. We restricted our sample to age-eligible HRS Life History Mail Survey respondents who provided data on cognitive functioning at least once during 1998-2014 and attended primary school or higher (n = 9,565 respondents providing 62,037 person-period observations). Estimates from linear mixed models revealed that school context, educational content, and academic ability were significantly associated with level of cognitive functioning but not rate of cognitive decline. Educational attainment explained 9%-55% of the association between these early educational experiences and level of cognitive functioning; however, all relationships remained statistically significant. Our results suggest that educational experiences that span childhood and adolescence are independently related to level of cognitive functioning decades later.