Education and Adult Cognition in a Low-Income Setting: Differences among Adult Siblings

Area of Science:

• Economics
• Cognitive Science
• Sociology

Background:

• The link between education and cognitive ability is well-established but potentially confounded by unobserved family factors.
• Shared genetics and upbringing may influence both educational attainment and cognitive outcomes.
• Previous studies often struggle to fully disentangle the causal effect of education.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the causal effect of completed education on adult cognitive function.
• To differentiate the impact of education from shared family background characteristics.
• To examine the robustness of the education-cognition relationship using sibling comparisons.

Main Methods:

• Utilized data from the Indonesia Family Life Survey (IFLS).
• Employed sibling fixed-effects models to control for unobserved, time-invariant family-specific factors.
• Compared the education-cognition association with the education-height association.

Main Results:

• Substantively large and statistically significant positive effects of education on adult cognition were found, even after controlling for sibling similarities.
• The strong positive correlation between education and adult height was reduced to zero in sibling fixed-effects models.
• This suggests that unobserved family factors significantly influence the education-height association, but not the education-cognition association.

Conclusions:

• Completed education has a substantial causal impact on adult cognitive abilities.
• Sibling comparisons confirm that education's cognitive benefits persist beyond shared family background.
• The education-height correlation is largely explained by shared family factors, unlike the education-cognition link.