Offspring education and cognitive health: A comparison between Hispanic and White older adults in the United States

We compared the relationship between offspring education and cognitive health outcomes among Hispanic and White adults.

We used data from Hispanic and White (1998-2018) United States (US) Health and Retirement Study (HRS) participants (n = 17,484). We assessed cognitive function and decline using episodic memory scores in linear mixed models and incident cognitive impairment with no dementia (CIND) or probable dementia using the Langa-Weir 27-point-scale in Cox proportional hazards models.

Higher offspring education (> 12 years) was associated with higher baseline cognitive scores and faster cognitive decline. Higher offspring education was also linked to a reduced risk of CIND or probable dementia, particularly among Hispanic participants. Among Hispanic participants, associations with cognitive decline but not incident CIND or probable dementia were of larger magnitude for foreign-born versus US-born participants.

We found limited evidence of heterogeneity in the association between offspring education and cognitive aging by Hispanic ethnicity and nativity.

Higher offspring education was associated with higher baseline cognitive scores regardless of ethnicity or nativity. We found some evidence of an association between higher offspring education and faster cognitive decline, though this association varied by ethnicity and nativity. Higher offspring education was associated with a reduced risk of incident CIND or dementia for Hispanic and White participants but of slightly larger magnitude for Hispanic participants.