Does childhood schooling affect old age memory or mental status? Using state schooling laws as natural experiments.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The association between schooling and old age cognitive outcomes such as memory disorders is well documented but, because of the threat of reverse causation, controversy persists over whether education affects old age cognition. Changes in state compulsory schooling laws (CSL) are treated as natural experiments (instruments) for estimating the effect of education on memory and mental status among the elderly. Changes in CSL predict changes in average years of schooling completed by children who are affected by the new laws. These educational differences are presumably independent of innate individual characteristics such as IQ.

Methods

CSL-induced changes in education were used to obtain instrumental variable (IV) estimates of education's effect on memory (n = 10,

SUBMITTER: Glymour MM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2796854 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature