Long-term Effects of Educational Investments on Cognitive Health

Project Summary One of the most robust findings in dementia research is that high educational attainment lowers the risk of Alzheimer's disease and related dementia (ADRD); a condition expected to affect more than 150 million people by 2050. Yet, because of large variability in the content and quality of K-12 and college education by place, race,

and socioeconomic status, educational experiences may better explain differences in late-life cognitive health. Evidence, however, is scarce on the causal effects of specific educational experiences on late-life cognition, and when they matter most. This is largely due to limited high-quality data spanning sufficient time to describe the

educational experiences of adults old enough to exhibit cognitive decline, and unobserved confounders in school experiences. The proposed study will overcome the limitations of prior studies and expand the literature by constructing a new dataset, linking it to multiple surveys, and using rigorous causal inference methods.

Specifically, we will leverage a natural experiment that provided variation in K-12 and college educational experiences in the 1950s-60s to evaluate the causal effects of educational content and quality on the cognitive function of older adults today. The natural experiment is The National Defense Education Act (NDEA), a federal

program implemented between 1958 and 1964 focused on improving students' mathematical and scientific skills. NDEA provided states with substantial resources 1) to improve science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and foreign-language education in K-12 and 2) provided college loans for low-income

students majoring in these fields. Funding levels varied over time by states, birth cohorts, and subjects based on poverty levels and population size. This enables us to use a two stage difference-in-differences framework to study causal effects of educational experiences on cognitive health for birth cohorts who were differently exposed

to NDEA and are now sufficiently old to exhibit symptoms of cognitive decline. Using historical education data, and several longitudinal surveys on health, education, and economic outcomes, we will: 1) document the NDEA's funding allotments and its effect on K-12 and/or college experiences, 2) estimate the causal effects of educational

experiences during K-12 or/and college on cognitive aging, 3) identify causal pathways mediating the total effect of educational experiences on cognitive health, and 4) examine whether long-term effects from Aims 2 and 3 vary by sex, race, geography, childhood socio-economic status, and genetic pre-disposition for ADRD and its risk

factors. This study will have a high impact because it creates new data on educational experiences linkable to existing, but rarely combined, surveys to address one of today's costliest health concerns, ADRD. These approaches and findings will help provide the first causal evidence of how educational experiences impact

cognitive function, with a particular focus on quantitative coursework, where racial and SES gaps mirror those for ADRD.