The Importance of Improving Educational Attainment for Dementia Prevalence Trends From 2000 to 2014, Among Older Non-Hispanic Black and White Americans
Year: 2021
Type: article
Abstract: OBJECTIVES: While a number of studies have documented a notable decline in age-standardized prevalence in dementia in the U.S. population, relatively little is known about how dementia has declined for specific age and race groups, and the importance of changing educational attainment on the downward trend. We assess (a) how the trends in dementia prevalence may have differed across age and race groups and (b) the role of changing educational attainment in understanding these trends. METHODS: This article estimates a series of logistic regression models using data from the Health and Retirement Study (2000-2014) to assess the relative annual decline in dementia prevalence and the importance of improving educational attainment for non-Hispanic Whites and non-Hispanic Blacks. RESULTS: Consistent with other studies, we found significant declines in dementia for non-Hispanic Blacks and non-Hispanic Whites across this period. Nonetheless, these declines were not uniform across age and race groups. Non-Hispanic Blacks aged 65-74 years had the steepest decline in this period. We also found that improved educational attainment in the population was fundamentally important in understanding declining dementia prevalence in the United States. DISCUSSION: This study shows the importance of improvement in educational attainment in the early part of the twentieth century to understand the downward trend in dementia prevalence in the United States from 2000 to 2014.
Language: English
Subfield: Psychiatry and Mental health
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
Awards: Biological Underpinnings of Socioeconomic Differentials in Health and Mortality, Race/Ethnic Differences in Life Course Exposure to Death: Consequences for Health, Center for Advancing Sociodemographic and Economic Study of Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias (CeASES-ADRD), Education, Early Life Conditions, and Trends in Dementia, Ethnic-specific Effects of Mitochondrial DNA Variants and Environmental Factors on Cognitive Functioning and Dementia, Population Research Center, From Biological to Social Processes: Interdisciplinary Training in Life Course Research, USC/UCLA Center on Biodemography and Population Health, University of Southern California Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and Alzheimer’s Disease-Related Dementias (ADRD) Resource Center for Minority Aging Research (USC AD/ADRD RCMAR), Health and Retirement Study: Yrs 35-40, Multidisciplinary Research Training in Gerontology, Training Program in Population Studies
OpenAlex ID: W3121524725