UC Davis

Introduction

Educational attainment is associated with late-life cognitive performance and dementia; few studies have examined diverse racial/ethnic groups to assess whether the association differs by race/ethnicity.

Methods

We investigated whether the association between educational attainment and cognition differed between White, Black, Asian, and Latino participants in the Kaiser Healthy Aging and Diverse Life Experiences study (n=1348). Covariate-adjusted multivariable linear regression models examined domains of verbal episodic memory, semantic memory, and executive functioning.

Results

We observed significant effect heterogeneity by race/ethnicity only for verbal episodic memory (P=0.0198), for which any schooling between high school and college was beneficial for White, Asian, and Black participants, but not Latino participants. We found no evidence of heterogeneity for semantic memory or executive function.

Discussion

With the exception of Latino performance on verbal episodic memory, more education consistently predicted better cognitive scores to a similar extent across racial/ethnic groups, despite likely heterogenous educational and social experiences.