Education and Cognitive Functioning in Later Life: The Nation’s High School Class of 1972

Education is among the most important determinants of later-life cognitive functioning and biological markers of AD/ADRD risk. However, we know very little about how, why, or for whom education matters for these cognitive outcomes. This makes it difficult to design effective early life preventative interventions. To know how and why education matters for later-life cognitive functioning and biological markers of AD/ADRD risk, we need high quality prospective studies that follow young people through schools and across adulthood; that measure key and modifiable educational contexts, opportunities, and outcomes; that observe midlife socioeconomic attainments; and that assess cognitive functioning and biological markers of AD/ADRD risk in late life. To date, no such studies exist. This project brings together an established and interdisciplinary team of neurologists, neuropsychologists, sociologists, education scientists, survey methodologists, biostatisticians, and neuroimaging experts who will re-contact surviving members the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972 (NLS-72; N=14,489). NLS-72 is a nationally representative random sample of Americans first interviewed as high school seniors in 1972. Following protocols developed and successfully deployed in the High School and Beyond (HSB) cohort in 2014-2015 and 2021, the team will conduct in-home interviews that include extensive cognitive assessments and anthropometric measures; in-home visits to gather whole blood; and (for 500 people near one of five regional centers) neuroimaging via harmonized magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The resulting data—which will be securely released to the wider scientific community during the project period—will be used to conduct transformative analyses of the effects of educational contexts, opportunities, and outcomes on risk of AD/ADRD as observed in cognitive assessments, blood-based markers of neuropathology, and neuroimaging. The project has four aims: (Aim 1) To estimate the extent to which education shapes biological, neurocognitive, and behavioral markers of AD/ADRD risk at age 70; (Aim 2) To estimate the extent to which adult socioeconomic attainments mediate the effects of education on vascular health, pace of biological aging, and cognitive functioning at age 70; (Aim 3) To estimate the extent to which racial and ethnic differences in the quality of and returns to education account for disparities in markers of AD/ADRD risk; and (Aim 4) To securely disseminate newly collected NLS-72 data for wide use by the research community. The analyses made possible by the newly collected data will transform our understanding of how and why education and other early life factors impact AD/ADRD risk and resilience.