Background:
Higher education consistently predicts improved late-life cognition. Racial differences in educational attainment likely contribute to inequities in dementia risk. However, few studies of education and cognition have controlled for prospectively measured early-life confounders or evaluated whether the education late-life cognition association is modified by race/ethnicity.
Methods:
Among 2343 Black and White Project Talent Aging Study participants who completed telephone cognitive assessments, we evaluated whether the association between years of education and cognition (verbal fluency, memory/recall, attention, and a composite cognitive measure) differed by race, and whether these differences persisted when adjusting for childhood factors, including the cognitive ability.
Results:
In fully adjusted linear regression models, each additional year of…
